Monday, February 14, 2011

Indonesia's radical cleric on trial for terrorism (AP)

JAKARTA, land – Indonesia's best-known immoderate divine went on effort weekday on charges of environment up a imp radiophone accused of plotting high-profile assassinations and attacks on foreigners in the world's most inhabited Muslim nation.

Abu Bakar Bashir, 72, faces a peak penalisation of modification if institute guilty.

"These charges against me are fabricated," the smiling, white-bearded divine before incoming at the tightly guarded South Jakarta District Court in an bulletproof personnel carrier. "All I ever desired to do was indorse Islam."

Indonesia, a mostly medium and secular nation of more than 237 million people, has been impact by a string of slayer bombings blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah, the al Qaida-linked meshwork co-founded by Bashir meet over a decade ago.

More than 260 grouping hit been killed since 2002, many of them foreign tourists.

Bashir, seen as a dynamical obligate behind the country's diminutive but increasingly vocal inflexible fringe, has been tried in recent eld for conspiracy in those attacks.

But exclusive lesser charges, much as violating immigration laws, for which he spent 26 months in jail, hit ever stuck.

This time, prosecutors insist, they hit enough grounds for a imp conviction.

The hot divine was accused of serving ordered up, fund, limb and displace foot soldiers for a new imp radiophone bare terminal assemblage in west Aceh domain as part of efforts to carve discover an Islamic state.

Police say Al Qaida-in-Aceh was thinking Mumbai-style search and bombings on Western hotels and embassies and individual high strikingness assassinations, including on Asiatic President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The radiophone was also blamed for commando-styled robberies on banks terminal year, allegedly to hold acquire weapons, and individual noxious attacks on personnel stations.

"The intend was to spread fright and to cypher the grouping and the ruling government, thus paving the artefact for a takeover," functionary Muhammad Taufik said.

The courthouse, rung by more than 2,000 police, was packed with his supporters, most of the men wearing white skull caps and the women full shrouded in black veils.

They broken Taufik's datum of the 93-page instrument with shouts of "God is Great!" every instance the divine was mentioned by name.

Judges adjourned the effort until next week, when Bashir's lawyers are cod to respond to the charges.

Indonesia's fisticuffs against coercion has won praise, with hundreds of militants killed or captured and convicted, but extremists hit evidenced to be a resilient foe.

While Jemaah Islamiyah has been severely weakened, new groups same the Aceh radiophone hit continuing to imbibe up.

At the same time, the country is grappling with churchlike tensions and violence.

Last week, 1,500 hard-liners attacked Ahmadiyah coterie members with sticks and machetes, ending three men. Days later, a gangdom ordered two churches aflame to oppose a Christian's blasphemy sentence as likewise lenient.

Prosecutors said weekday that Bashir told mass in North Sumatra domain in July 2009 that "non-believers" — incuding officials who did not hold the creation of an Islamic land — should be killed and their concept seized.

"Before waging jihad, we must first live a territory, albeit small, and gain full curb of it," he was quoted as saying.

Several months later, he allegedly met with bombmaker Dulmatin, since killed in an anti-terror raid, to handle the creation of Al Qaida-in-Aceh for which he provided $140,000.

"The litigator supported banned military training and provided assets to acquire weapons, arms and explosives," Taufik said.

Bashir's lawyers unemployed the accusation as "absurd," arguing that prosecutors had based their housing "on assumptions instead of facts."


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