Released cleric hits out at US

Militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir lashed out at the US just hours after his release from jail today, as he headed to his home town to resume teaching at an Islamic school notorious for producing several deadly militants.

Bashir was given a hero’s welcome by around 150 supporters outside Jakarta’s Cipinang prison after serving a 26-month sentence for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people, mostly young foreign tourists.

Famed for his fiery rhetoric, the 68-year-old Bashir is alleged by the US and Australia to be a founder and top leader in Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaida-linked terror group blamed for the Bali bombings and a host of other bloody attacks and failed plots in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

“The US is a state terrorist because it is waging war against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he told reporters when asked about the US accusations.

“This is the kind of thinking we can expect from infidels.”

Bashir made the remarks after he stopped for midday prayers in the town of Tegal, east of Jakarta, en route to his boarding school in the central Javanese city of Solo, where about 1,000 people waited to greet him.

On his arrival in Solo, he went directly for a check-up at a hospital, where hundreds of his followers greeted him with cries of “God is great!”

It was unclear whether he would spend the night there.