JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – A cleric who inspired bombings in Bali and other areas has been released from an Indonesian prison on Friday after completing his sentence for training Islamic militants.
Police said they would monitor the activities of Abu Bakar Bashir, 82. His son said Bashir would avoid activities outside his home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The slender, white-bearded Bashir, an Indonesian of Yemeni descent, was the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah network linked to al-Qaida, 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 the country.
Bashir was arrested in 2011 for links to a militant training camp in the religiously conservative province of Aceh. He was convicted of financing the military camp to train Islamic militants and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He received a total of 55 months of sentence reductions, which are regularly granted to prisoners on major holidays, said Rika Aprianti, spokesperson for the correction department at the Ministry of Justice.
“He will be released as his sentence ends,” Aprianti said.
Bashir, wearing a white robe and mask, was escorted by the National Police’s anti-terrorism team, known as Densus 88, when he left Gunung Sindur Prison in Bogor, West Java, at dawn, Bashir’s son, Abdul Rohim, told The Associated Press.
He said the family, lawyers and a medical team accompanied Bashir to his home at the Islamic boarding school he set up in Solo City, about 540 kilometers east of the capital Jakarta.
Rohim said the family had agreed with the authorities not to hold any celebrations to welcome Bashir.
“I just want to keep my father out of the crowd during the coronavirus pandemic,” Rohim said. “He will just rest and gather with his family until the outbreak ends. There will certainly be no other activities for him. ”
Endro Sudarsono, spokesman for the school, said he did not hold any welcoming events because “we have agreed with authorities to keep a large crowd away to limit the spread of the coronavirus.”
Police removed five large welcoming banners and dozens of smaller posters, saying they would attract people, replacing them with a single banner announcing there would be no celebrations.
Ahmad Ramadhan, national police spokesman, said police would monitor Bashir’s activities.
In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison described Bashir’s release as a “gut attack” and said the government had long called for tougher sentences against those behind the bombings.
“Judgment decisions … are, as we know, important for the Indonesian legal system and we must respect the decisions they make,” Morrison said on Friday.
He said that while Bashir’s release was in line with the Indonesian legal system, ‘it makes it easier for any Australian to accept that … ultimately those responsible for the murder of Australians would now be free. This is sometimes not a fair world. And that’s one of the hardest things to deal with. ”
Indonesian authorities have struggled to prove Bashir’s involvement in the bombings in Bali and have waged several battles to uphold convictions on other charges. Prosecutors were unable to prove a series of terrorism-related allegations, a conviction for treason was reversed and a sentence for a conviction on documents was considered light.
After being released from prison in 2004, he was arrested and again charged with leading Jemaah Islamiyah and also giving his blessing to the bombings in Bali. A court acquitted him of leading the group, but sentenced him to 30 months for conspiracy in the bombings.
After his release in 2006, he resumed his education at the Al-Mukmin residence, which he had formed in 1972, and he traveled the country giving sermons.
Under Bashir’s influence, the school became a militant production line and radicalized a generation of students. Many later terrorized Indonesia with bombings and attacks aimed at establishing an Islamic caliphate and tarnished the country’s reputation as tolerance.
In speeches, Bashir said that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and three militants sentenced to death for the Bali bombings were not terrorists but “soldiers in Allah’s army”.
A court banned Jemaah Islamiyah in 2008, and the group was weakened by a continued repression of militants by Indonesia’s anti-terrorism police with the support of America and Australia.
An attack on the camp in 2010 that helped Bashir fund was a crushing blow to radical networks in Indonesia and forced changes in the mission of Islamic extremists. Instead of targeting Western people and symbols, the militant targeted Indonesians who are seen as ‘unbelievers’, such as the police, anti-terrorists, legislators and others who are seen as obstacles to transforming the secular country into an Islamic state that governed by sharia. More recently, militants have been inspired by attacks by the Islamic State abroad.
Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Conflict Policy Analysis, which closely monitors Southeast Asian Muslim militant groups, said Bashir’s release was unlikely to increase the risk of terrorism in Indonesia, as many would-be terrorists today is too young to remember the Jemaah Islamiyah bombing that took place while Bashir was the leader.
“Extremist cells are much more broken than when Bashir was in prison,” she said, adding that Bashir did not write anything that could be used as a learning material for radical groups.
“In addition, I doubt Bashir will have much room for radical preaching, even if he wants to,” Jones said.
Bashir was transferred from isolation on a prison island to Gunung Sindur Prison in 2016 due to age and health reasons and was hospitalized several times due to his deteriorating health.
President Joko Widodo almost granted a request for his early release in 2019 on humanitarian grounds, but turned himself in to protests from the Australian government and from family members of the victims of the Bali bombing.
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Associated Press author Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report.