JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – A cleric who inspired the Bali bombings and other attacks was released from an Indonesian prison on Friday after serving a sentence to fund the training of Islamic militants.
Police said they would monitor the activities of Abu Bakar Bashir, who is 82 years old and ill. His son said Bashir would avoid activities outside his home because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The thin, white-bearded Bashir, an Indonesian of Yemeni descent, was the spiritual leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network behind the 2002 bombings on the tourist island of Bali, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. including 88 Australians, leaving a deep scar in that country.
Bashir was arrested in 2011 for his links to a religiously conservative militant training camp in Aceh province. He was convicted of funding a military-style camp to train Islamic militants and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He received a total of 55 months of reduced sentences, which are often granted to detainees on public holidays, said Rika Aprianti, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s Corrections Department.
“He is released as his sentence ends,” Aprianti said.
Bashir, dressed in a white coat and mask, was escorted by the National Police’s anti-terrorist team, known as Densus 88, when he left the Gunung Sindur prison in Bogor, West Java, at dawn, he told the Associated Press son of Bashir, Abdul Rohim.
He said his family, lawyers and a medical team accompanied Bashir to his home at the Islamic boarding school he co-founded in Solo, about 540 kilometers (335 miles) east of the capital Jakarta.
Rohim said the family had agreed with authorities not to hold a party to greet Bashir.
“I just want to keep my father out of the crowd during the coronavirus pandemic,” Rohim said. “He will rest and gather with his family until the end of the outbreak. There will certainly be no other activities for him. ”
School spokesman Endro Sudarsono said he did not host any events because “we have agreed with the authorities to keep a large crowd away to stop the spread of the coronavirus.”
Police removed five large welcome banners and dozens of smaller banners, saying they would attract people and replaced them with a single flag announcing that there would be no holidays.
National Police spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan said police would monitor Bashir’s activities.
In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison described Bashir’s release as a “gut snatch” and said the government had long called for harsher sentences against those behind the bombings.
“The sentencing decisions … as we know, are issues for the Indonesian justice system and we have to respect the decisions we make,” Morrison said Friday.
He said that although Bashir’s release was in line with Indonesia’s justice system, “This does not make it easier for any Australian to accept that … in the end, those responsible for killing Australians would now be free. Sometimes it’s not a fair world. And this is one of the hardest things to solve. “
Indonesian authorities have struggled to prove Bashir’s involvement in the Bali attacks and have fought several battles to support the convictions on other charges. Prosecutors have been unable to prove a number of terrorism-related charges, a conviction for treason has been overturned, and a conviction for forgery of documents has been deemed easy.
After his release from prison in 2004, he was arrested and charged again with the leadership of Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as the blessing of the Bali bombings. A court released him from the group’s leadership, but sentenced him to 30 months for conspiracy in the bombing.
After his release in 2006, he resumed teaching at the Al-Mukmin boarding school he co-founded in 1972 and traveled the country giving sermons of fire.
The school became a militant production line under Bashir’s influence, radicalizing a generation of students. Many later terrorized Indonesia with bombings and attacks aimed at bringing about an Islamic caliphate and tarnishing the country’s reputation for tolerance.
In his speech, Bashir said that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and three militants sentenced to death for the Bali attacks were not terrorists, but “soldiers of Allah’s army.”
A court banned Jemaah Islamiyah in 2008, and the group was weakened by a crackdown on militants by Indonesia’s counterterrorism police, backed by the US and Australia.
A 2010 raid on the camp that Bashir helped fund was a crushing blow to Indonesia’s radical networks and forced changes in the mission of Islamic extremists. Instead of targeting Western people and symbols, the militants targeted Indonesians who were considered “unbelievers,” such as police, anti-terrorist teams, parliamentarians and others who were seen as obstacles to transforming the secular country into an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law. . More recently, militants have been inspired by Islamic State attacks abroad.
Sidney Jones, director of the Institute for Political Analysis of the Conflict in Jakarta, which closely monitors groups of Muslim militants in Southeast Asia, said Bashir’s release is unlikely to increase the risk of terrorism in Indonesia, as many potential terrorists today are too young to remember the Jemaah Islamiyah bombing campaign that took place while Bashir was its leader.
“Extremist cells are much more fractured than when Bashir went to prison,” she said, adding that Bashir did not write anything that could be used as teaching material for radical groups.
Moreover, with the government’s crackdown on “radicals,” I doubt Bashir will have much room for radical preaching, even if he wants to, “Jones said.
Bashir was transferred from solitary confinement to a prison island in Gunung Sindur Prison in 2016 due to age and health and has been in hospital several times due to his health condition.
President Joko Widodo almost accepted an early release request in 2019 for humanitarian reasons, but reversed it after protests by the Australian government and relatives of the victims of the Bali bombings.
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Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk of Canberra, Australia, contributed to the report.