Asia Times, 30 Oct 2004
Indonesian cleric back in the dock
By Bill Guerin
JAKARTA - Smack in the middle of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, hordes of
international and local reporters have descended on a makeshift courtroom here to
witness the long-awaited and pivotal trial that pits the state against one of its people,
66-year-old militant cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.
The trial opened on Thursday, only eight days after the inauguration of President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the retired general who swept to power promising to
crack down on terrorism.
Feelings among Muslims everywhere were running high this week anyway, angered
and outraged over the "brutal" and "inhumane" treatment of Muslim protesters in
Thailand. A total of 78 Thai Muslim protesters suffocated to death when they were
crammed into army trucks for more than six hours after a protest on Monday at the
Tak Bai district police station in Thailand's Narathiwat province. Others died of injuries
inflicted by police, brining the total number of deaths to more than 80. "They packed
them like sardines into trucks. It's inhumane during this holy fasting month of
Ramadan," said Amidhan, head of the influential Indonesian Council of Ulemas
(Islamic religious leaders).
A spokesperson from Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second-largest Muslim
organization, called the security forces' actions "brutal".
"What happened was state terrorism," said Dien Syamsuddin. "We strongly
denounce it."
Meanwhile, outside the court, an auditorium at the Agriculture Ministry in south
Jakarta, hundreds of Muslims from various groups gathered, though a very large police
presence ensured there was little disturbance. Inside, scores of Ba'asyir's supporters
shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), as police packing M-16 assault rifles led
the cleric to his chair in front of the judges.
In the 65-page indictment, which took three hours to read out, Ba'asyir was charged
with a string of offences. Some charges relate to the Jakarta JW Marriott Hotel
bombing last August when 12 people were killed, as well as the establishment of a
training camp on the Philippine island of Mindanao and the discovery of a cache of
explosives in July this year.
Though the offenses theoretically all come under stringent anti-terrorism legislation
passed in the wake of the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, Ba'asyir cannot be
charged for those attacks under that legislation, because of a Supreme Court ruling
earlier this year that the legislation, passed after those attacks, could not be applied
retroactively.
He has instead been charged on criminal counts related to Bali under the country's
criminal code.
The case for the prosecution rests on proving that Ba'asyir is or was the spiritual
leader of the regional terrorism network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) - and therefore must
have known about that attacks, even if he did not actually plan them.
He is charged with ordering a fatwa, or religious decree from Osama bin Laden to
wage war against and to kill Americans and their allies, to be disseminated among JI
members. Although an avowed supporter of Osama bin Laden, Ba'asyir has
consistently denied any involvement in JI and insists all the accusations against him
are part of a US-led conspiracy to discredit Islam.
Though the majority of Indonesian Muslims are moderates, militants like Ba'asyir, who
also heads the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), which wants to turn Indonesia
into a religious state ruled by Islamic law, feed on the anti-Western sentiment
spawned by the earlier demonizing of Islam by the American press and the insensitive
use of words like "crusade" by the US leadership. Many Indonesians see the West as
always having an ulterior motive and bent on world domination. You are either against
terrorism or with it, said the West's new Charlemagne, US President George W Bush,
not long after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Conversely, Western misconceptions of Islam in Indonesia, particularly the tendency
to equate Islam with extremism, help give radical groups an edge of credence in
mainstream society.
True to form, Ba'asyir, just before the end of the session, launched into a tirade
accusing the Americans and Australians of forcing his prosecution. "I ask the panel of
judges and the prosecutors to be careful of attempts from these two enemies of God,
the United States and Australia," he told the panel of judges.
Ba'asyir's lawyers appear to have jumped on the same bandwagon. "We hope this
trial won't be interfered in by a certain political power, especially a foreign one,"
Muhammad Assegaf, the lead lawyer in the defense team, told Reuters.
Little wonder that the US Embassy warned in a statement on Thursday that the
"venue of the terrorism trial...could draw large crowds", while also reiterating an earlier
warning to Americans to stay away from "all stand-alone bars, clubs or nightclubs,
which could be attacked by protesters".
In April, Ba'asyir's supporters fought pitched street battles with police when they
re-arrested the cleric as he walked out of Jakarta's Salemba prison after serving 18
months on immigration violations charges.
US fails to lend a hand
Though the Bush administration has been exerting strong pressure on Jakarta to
prosecute Ba'asyir, it has steadfastly refused to help the prosecutors.
Some of the allegations against Ba'asyir come from suspected terrorist mastermind
Hambali, alias Riduan Isamuddin, al-Qaeda's operational point man in Southeast
Asia. According to a report from the 9-11 Commission, the US federal commission
that probed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hambali told American
interrogators that he had pledged his loyalty to and got his orders from Ba'asyir.
Hambali was seized in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation in Bangkok in
August 2003 and has since been held by the Americans at a secret location.
More than a year later Indonesian police have still not been allowed to interrogate him
directly, which means, ironically, that prosecutors cannot introduce the Hambali
allegations in court without his actually being present as a witness, to give Ba'asyir's
lawyers an opportunity to cross-examine him.
According to the charges against Ba'asyir, a month before the Bali blasts Ba'asyir
met with the infamous "smiling bomber" Amrozi, later sentenced to death after being
convicted of involvement in the bombings, and discussed plans for an attack.
Militants who confessed to involvement in the Marriott bombing claimed the US-owned
hotel was attacked to avenge injustices perpetrated by Americans and Australians
against Muslims in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Yet most of those killed in the
blast were Muslims. The one foreign fatality was a Dutch banker.
Seventeen people have now been convicted in connection with that bombing, which
also has been blamed on the JI.
Indonesia's Islamic condition
Though some 89% of Indonesia's 220 million people profess a belief in Islam, the
country is not an Islamic state. It does not represent the fundamentalist Islam of
Pakistan or Iran, but a much more emancipated and diluted version of the ancient
religion.
The country was founded as a secular state and remains that to this day, though it
has, in the past, suffered violence at the hands of those flying the banner of Islam.
The earliest example of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam was the Darul Islam
movement led by a Javanese mystic named Kartosuwirjo, who declared an
independent Islamic state in West Java in 1948. Over the next 14 years, more than
40,000 people lost their lives and at least 1 million were displaced. The rebellion was
crushed by founding president Sukarno in 1962 and its leader executed.
Later, during Suharto's rule, hardline Islamic groups were a major target of state
surveillance and repression. Suharto's former State Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief
Ahmad Hendropriyono was often linked to the brutal suppression of Muslims who
opposed the regime. Various acts of violence and subversion were blamed on them,
although some evidence suggests that intelligence agencies played a role in
manipulating former Darul Islam elements.
Hendropriyono, a retired general, was also a key player in former president Megawati
Sukarnoputri's "war against terror", with BIN identifying and arresting several
suspected terrorists. He had demanded tougher laws and greater powers for
intelligence agencies to combat terror. A key loyalist of Megawati, he resigned after
Yudhoyono took office.
Militant groups come out of the woodwork
Following Suharto's downfall in May 1998, a number of militant Islamic groups came
out of the woodwork. Laskar Jihad, the main group, deployed up to 6,000 paramilitary
fighters to "protect Muslims" in the bloody Christian-Muslim conflicts in Maluku and
Central Sulawesi provinces but later disbanded shortly after the Bali attacks in 2002.
The Indonesian Mujahidin Council that Ba'asyir heads - many members of which were
outside the courtroom on Thursday, shouting anti-American slogans - and the Islamic
Defenders' Front (FPI), in the news again for violence against "places of vice", were
the other two main organizations that quickly became known for violent behavior,
though they remained on the fringes of society.
There is still no evidence that either of these militant groups have committed terrorist
acts, but both remain committed to the full implementation of Islamic law in Indonesia.
This squares with the alleged JI dream that a Southeast Asian Islamic caliphate can
be established within the next 10 to 15 years.
Juwono Sudarsono, the new defense minister who held the same post under former
president Abdurrahman Wahid, has described this dream, the so-called street Islam,
as the main appeal for the Islamic poor.
The appeal of street Islam, and bin Ladenism, to several Islamic groups in Indonesia
is shallow, but its very simplicity explains a lot for them, Sudarsono said, adding "I
think the poor have always been easily manipulated by the angry middle class, who
have become disillusioned with their respective governments."
Yet the solid foundation of Islam in Indonesia is still built on the two broadly based
organizations, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, which claim a membership of
more than 25% of all Indonesians. Both are moderate in philosophy and support the
country's religiously neutral philosophy of Pancasila, rejecting calls for Indonesia to
become an Islamic state.
The radicals, including Ba'asyir, want Islamic law (Sharia) to be forced on the world's
biggest Muslim population, and many claim they are ready to die to achieve this.
Domestic politics will play an important role in the outcome of this trial. A severe
sentence for Ba'asyir, who could, in theory, face a firing squad, could mean that he
would become a martyr in Islamic politics. On the other hand, for the public in
general, a fair trial for the cleric would earn kudos at home for the president and bring
the radicals down a peg or two.
The Indonesian judiciary, almost without exception, serves the country's vested
interests, which at the moment can safely be assumed to be those of the new
president. But with Western and Islamic opinion polarized on the opposite sides of the
scales of justice, Yudhoyono and the judges will need to strike a balance between the
need to send a strong signal to extremists that the fight against terrorism will be
fought on Indonesian soil, regardless of considerations of religion and associated
risks, and the real risk of alienating the West as he starts his five-year term.
Bill Guerin has worked for 19 years in Indonesia as a journalist and editor. He
specializes in business/economy issues and political analysis related to Indonesia.
He has been a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000 and has also
been published by the BBC on East Timor. He can be reached at
softsell@prima.net.id.
Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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