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Bashir gets 4-year jail term

By P. S. Suryanarayana

JAKARTA Sept. 2. The Central Jakarta District Court today sentenced a top Islamic cleric, Abubakar Baasyir (Bashir), to four years in prison after finding him guilty of a limited act of treason.

The court, however, held that there was "no evidence'' to fully substantiate the prosecution's case that Bashir was indeed the leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), alleged regional affiliate of the Al-Qaeda.

Nor was he convicted on the charge of leading a plot to assassinate the Indonesian President, Megawati Sukarnoputri, when she was the Vice-President.

Bashir indicated that he would appeal against the verdict that appeared related to the charge of his attempt to destabilise Indonesia through means aimed at creating some form of an Islamic state. The prosecutors, who had levelled a miscellany of charges against Bashir under the overall rubric of treasonable offences, had sought a 15-year jail term for the accused.

Bashir consistently denied any wrong-doing and disclaimed any links to the JI, either spiritual or political, whose existence was first brough to light by the Singapore authoirities.

Bashir's alleged links to the JI rested on the evidence tendered, through teleconferences, by a couple of suspects who were being held in other countries in the region.

Exonerated of this key charge, Bashir continued to enthuse his supporters who would now pin their hopes on the appeal process.

With the possibility of the prosecutors themselves challenging the relative lenient punishment, the "anti-terror brigade'' in this country and region tends to see the verdict as a chance to stay their course.

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