Posted on 04/30/2004 9:02:21 PM PDT by Piefloater
JEMAAH Islamiah-linked cleric Abu Bakar Bashir could face the death sentence for masterminding the Bali bombings, after being released from jail yesterday then immediately rearrested.
New evidence, including a report from JI's training camp in The Philippines and statements from witnesses, will be used against the 65-year-old, whose transfer from Jakarta's Salemba prison to police headquarters caused a riot.
Bashir was sentenced to four years' jail last year for treason and visa fraud.
Charges that he led JI were dismissed for lack of evidence, and he later escaped the treason charges.
The visa fraud sentence was reduced to 18 months, which ended yesterday.
Under Indonesian anti-terrorism law, he could now be executed if found guilty of leading the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, and other terrorist atrocities.
Police have the power to detain him for up to six months without charge.
Hundreds of Bashir's supporters clashed violently with police outside Salemba prison before the cleric was bundled into an armoured police van and taken to police headquarters.
At least 1000 police officers and intelligence operatives were deployed at the scene, where several agitators were arrested and dozens of police and militants wounded.
Police in riot gear used teargas and water cannons to push the militants back from the prison gates.
Accused of leading JI until his arrest shortly after the Bali bombings in October 2002, a charge he has repeatedly denied, Bashir had expected to walk free from prison yesterday.
Yet Security Ministry official Dharmawan Ranotipuro said Bashir had instead been arrested for his role as leader of the terrorist organisation, and added it was likely that convicted JI operatives would testify in Bashir's second trial.
"Some of them will be witnesses," he said.
Furious supporters outside the prison threw home-made firebombs, half-bricks and rocks at the police, but were eventually beaten back. Giono, a 40-year-old trader from Bashir's home town of Solo, in Central Java, said he had been attacked by three police officers wielding riot sticks.
Bandaged and bloody, he said he had done nothing wrong.
"At the time of the chaos, I tried to run, but I was pulled back and then assaulted (by the police)," he said.
The chairman of Bashir's Indonesian Mujaheddin Council, Irfan Awwas, said the violence was unwarranted and that police had breached an agreement to maintain peace until Bashir's lawyers arrived at the prison.
"On the day he was to breathe the fresh air of freedom he has been detained, and it has been a bloody Friday," Mr Awwas said.
Yet police said the swoop was necessary to prevent even worse violence.
Wahyudin, principal of Bashir's Ngruki Islamic boarding school in Solo, who was also at the scene yesterday morning, said he was sorry and ashamed of the Indonesian police in their treatment of Bashir.
"He is an old man who has already eaten much bitterness," he said. "Why must this be forced on him?"
Dozens of accused and convicted JI extremists were educated at the Ngruki school, or otherwise linked to it.
Over the past 18 months, Bashir has been at the centre of a polarisation of Islam in Indonesia, and his arrest will deepen the divide.
Many hardline Islamic leaders visited him in prison and rallied to his cause, echoing his theory that the renewed police investigation was the result of a US and Australian conspiracy.
They would need to try him before executing him, naturally. Cut the Indonesian government a little slack here, please. They've already tried a number of people involved in the Bali bombing, and sentenced the most provably culpable to death, with other, more marginally involved individuals receiving long prison sentences. This gut, the real ringleader, isn't going anywhere, and will not escape his due...
the infowarrior
I grant you that there is much that goes on in that country which gives one pause in voting a lot of confidence in their ability, but you could remember one thing. The tourism trade in Bali is very economically important to the country, and I highly doubt that they would do much to jeopardize that applecart.
As I said they have already tried, and convicted a number of people involved, with a number of death sentences being handed down, and others to long prison terms. It was in their economic self-interest to do so, so they acted.
They have wanted to do something about this radical for some time now, and perhaps they now have an opprotunity to do so, so we shall see what ends up being more important to them, economic self-interest, or Muslim "unity"...
the infowarrior
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