Cleric charged with ordering hotel suicide attack

Indonesian prosecutors today charged militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir with ordering his followers to launch a suicide attack on a Jakarta hotel last year.

Prosecutors filed a 65-page dossier containing the charges against Bashir, prosecutor Andi Herman said.

“Bashir is charged with motivating or ordering people to take part in terrorism, in this case related to the JW Marriott bombing,” he said.

The trial of the 68-year-old cleric could now start within weeks.

Prosecutors had earlier said Bashir would be charged with heading Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaida-linked group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings. It was unclear whether those charges were also included in the dossier.

Herman said Bashir would be tried under the country’s anti-terror law, which allows the death sentence.

Jemaah Islamiyah has also been blamed for the Marriott attack, which killed 12, and last month’s attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in which nine people died.

Authorities dropped plans to charge Bashir in connection with the Bali attacks after the country’s top court ruled earlier this year that the retroactive application of the anti-terror law was unconstitutional.

Bashir, who was in jail at the time of the Marriott attack, denies any wrongdoing.