Indonesian cleric rejects terror charges

A controversial Muslim cleric went on trial today denying he ordered dozens of deadly Christmas Eve bomb attacks against Indonesian churches.

Prosecutors have charged Abu Bakar Bashir with treason, saying he was trying to overthrow the country’s secular government.

Bashir, who is said to be the spiritual leader of a militant group linked to al-Qaida, Jemaah Islamiyah, rejected the claims. “These are lies from America,” he said.

The 64-year-old cleric faces life in prison if convicted. The proceedings are expected to last for months, and today’s start was broadcast live on television.

A smiling and relaxed Bashir had strode into the tightly guarded Central Jakarta District Court in flowing white robes.

Hundreds of his supporters inside the courtroom lifted their hands in unison and shouted “Allahu akbar” – “God is great.”

Bashir sat passively as prosecutors read out a 25 page indictment detailing claims that he authorised a near-simultaneous string of church bombings that killed 19 people in 11 Indonesian towns and cities on December 24, 2000.

He is accused of ordering the bombings against Indonesia’s Christian minority in the hope of shattering religious tolerance and destabilising the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

Prosecutors said his ultimate aim was to topple Indonesia’s secular government and establish a fundamentalist Islamic state that would span much of South-east Asia.

They said he founded the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah and secretly recruited, trained and deployed militants in several countries.

Jemaah Islamiyah, which Western intelligence services say has ties with the al-Qaida terror network, was blamed for the nightclub bombings on October 12, 2002 that killed 202 people, including 24 Britons, on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali.

Authorities say they have not been able to link Bashir directly to the Bali attack – the world’s worst terrorist strike since September 11, 2001.

But 29 Bali bombings suspects have been arrested, and many of them have been identified as supporters of Bashir. They are expected to stand trial soon.

While Indonesia has arrested Bali bombing suspects, it is under intense pressure to lock up Bashir and thus reaffirm its commitment to the US-led war on terror.

In the indictment, prosecutors also accused Bashir of giving “his blessing” to other planned terror strikes against Western interests in South-east Asia, such as aborted attacks on US interests in Singapore.

It also alleges Bashir’s group drafted a death list of Christian priests in Indonesia and at one time plotted the assassination of President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Bashir, who has been detained in Jakarta since October, maintained today that he was a religious teacher, not a terrorist mastermind.

Outside the court, a couple of hundred supporters – many of them students from Bashir’s Islamic boarding school in Solo city – called for his release.

Some carried banners that read: “A Muslim cleric is detained the corrupt are protected” and “Who Is The Real Terrorist?”