The Jakarta Post, April 15, 2003
Prosecutors formally charge Ba'asyir with treason
Agencies, Jakarta
Prosecutors submitted the dossiers of Abu Bakar Ba'asyir to the Central Jakarta
District Court on Monday and charged him with treason and immigration violations.
"We hope the court can form a team of judges as soon as possible to start the trial,"
said prosecutor Hasan Madani, who submitted the dossiers on Monday morning.
Usually, it takes between two weeks to four weeks for a court to select the judges.
Treason carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail, while immigration violations
are punishable with six years in jail.
The indictment accused Ba'asyir, founder and leader of the Ngruki school in Solo,
Central Java and the alleged spiritual leader of Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), of plotting a
string of bombings in Indonesia as part of a campaign to topple the government and
set up an Islamic state.
The 25-page charge sheet, however, did not accuse Ba'asyir, 64, of direct involvement
in the Bali bombings on Oct. 12, 2002, which killed at least 202 people and injured
more than 350 others, mostly foreigners.
But it said he gave his blessing to the Christmas Eve bombings targeting churches
and priests which killed 19 people in Jakarta and other cities across the country in
2000.
Ba'asyir "also approved the planning to bomb American interests in Singapore known
as program C," it said. Singapore foiled that bombing plot with the arrest of a large
number of JI suspects.
The charges, along with thousands of pages of evidence, were handed over in
preparation for a trial. A court official said it could take part in Jakarta "within weeks".
According to Muljohardjo, Ba'asyir would be tried at the hall of the Meteorological and
Geophysics Agency office building in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta.
The hall had earlier been used as a venue for the trials of House of Representatives
Speaker Akbar Tandjung for graft, and Tommy Soeharto for the murder of a Supreme
Court justice.
"The defendant is the leader and organizer of treason with the intention of toppling the
government and fulfilling his intention of setting up the Islamic State of Indonesia," the
charge read.
It is believed that Ba'asyir and Abdullah Sungkar, who has died of natural causes, set
up JI in the 1990s with Sungkar as leader and Ba'asyir as his deputy.
The prosecutors also charged Ba'asyir with making false documents to show he was
a resident of the Java town of Ngruki.
He was also accused of making a false affidavit about his whereabouts from 1985 to
1999 and with failing to carry out his obligations as a foreigner in Indonesia.
Ba'asyir fled to Malaysia in 1985 after serving a three-year-jail term for subversion but
never notified the Indonesian embassy there of his presence -- a necessary
requirement if he wished to retain his Indonesian citizenship.
He returned to Indonesia after the fall of dictator Soeharto in 1998.
Ba'asyir, who was detained last October, was not present in court. He has denied any
links to terrorism but has described al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as "a true
Muslim fighter".
All contents copyright © of The Jakarta Post.
|
