Marianne Kearney in Jakarta 03mar05
RADICAL Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has been using his jail time to recruit hundreds of radicals through Islamic schools set up inside Jakarta prisons with the approval of the authorities.
Indonesia's Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir points at a journalist as he leaves a makeshift court in southern Jakarta on February 25, 2005. A verdict will be delivered next week in the trial on terrorism charges of Bashir who is linked to deadly bomb attacks, an Indonesian judge said on Friday. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside
Bashir will be in court today to hear the verdict in his trial on terror charges.
A panel of judges will decide whether or not he was the alleged spiritual leader of the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network blamed for a string of attacks, including the Bali bombings of 2002. But the radical cleric appears to have found prison to be one of his easiest and most successful recruiting grounds.
Bashir, along with leaders from other militant Muslim groups such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), has set up a series of schools or pesantren not just in Cipinang, where he was detained over the past two years, but also in two other Jakarta prisons – Salemba and Tangerang.
FPI leaders say the prison pesantren are a cheap and easy way for these groups to recruit potential radicals.
"If we build new boarding schools we must have money for food and buildings, but in prison it is all free because it comes from the Government. So we co-operate with the Government to develop human resources," says Hilmy Bakar, the vice-chairman of the Defenders Front.
Bashir, often accompanied by FPI leader Habib Rizieq, regularly holds Muslim prayer sessions for students at his prison boarding school called Pesantren Attawaibin.
This has 500 members drawn from the prison population, while Salemba, where Habib served a short jail term for inciting followers to destroy bars, has 300 members, as does Tangerang Prison.
Bakar claims Bashir and Rizieq's teachings focus on avoiding sin and belief in Allah, thus developing the prisoner's "human resources". Bashir and Rizieq are not teaching the prison inmates to use violence, but to attack the West with ideas, he says.
Bashir, who gives Muslim teachings two to three times a week at Cipinang Prison, planned to continue leading the pesantren there even if he is freed in today's court case, said Farid Syafi'i, the FPI secretary-general.
Prosecutors have struggled to prove the white-bearded cleric had a hand in attacks carried out and abandoned plans to seek the death penalty. Instead, they have sought an eight-year prison term after a succession of witnesses either withdrew testimony or refused to give evidence naming Bashir as the "emir", or head, of JI.
Additional reporting AAP
