[TexKat]

Bashir jailed for 30 months over bombing

15:37 AEDT Thu Mar 3 2005

AP - Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has been sentenced to two and a half years in jail after a court in Jakarta found him guilty of conspiracy in the Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

The charge was brought under Indonesia's standard criminal code.

Alleged terror mastermind Bashir was acquitted of other more serious charges laid under the Indonesia's tough new anti-terrorism laws.

"The defendant has been proven legally and convincingly to have committed the crime of evil conspiracy that caused fire that left other people dead", Chief Judge Soedarto said.

Prosecutors had sought eight years in jail for Bashir on various terrorism and criminal charges related to bomb attacks.

Western governments accuse Bashir of being the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiah, seen as the regional arm of al-Qaeda.

[TexKat]

Homemade bombs explode in Milan, Genoa

11:46 AEDT Thu Mar 3 2005

AP - Italy's interior minister blamed anarchists for three explosive devices that caused blasts near a paramilitary police barracks in Genoa and two others that exploded near paramilitary barracks in Milan.

Although no injuries were reported at the two Carabinieri offices, Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told politicians the devices were "meant to kill."

Pisanu, political head of Italy's state police forces, also repeated his assessment in comments to reporters and pledged the country would crack down on the attackers.

An anarchist group linked in the past to a series of parcel bomb explosions in Italy, claimed responsibility for planting the devices in the two cities, authorities said.

The minister, referring to the Italian Mediterranean island, described the bombs as the latest "attempt to link the anarchists with other subversive groups cut from different ideological matrixes, in this case, with the movements of revolutionary Sardinian resistance."