JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – A firefighter who inspired Bali bombing and other attacks was released from an Indonesian prison on Friday after serving his sentence for funding the training of Islamist militants.
Police said they will monitor the activities of Abu Bakar Bashir, who is 82 and sick. His son said Bashir will avoid outdoor activities because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The slim, white-bearded Bashir, an Indonesian of Yemeni descent, was the spiritual leader of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jemaah Islamiyah network behind the 2002 bombings on the tourist island of Bali that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, including 88 Australians. leaving a deep scar in that country.
Bashir was jailed in 2011 for his ties to a militant training camp in the religiously conservative Aceh province. He was convicted of funding the military-style camp to train Islamist militants and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He received a total of 55 months of reduced sentence, which is often awarded to inmates during major holidays, said Rika Aprianti, spokesman for the Justice Department’s corrections department.
“He will be released when his sentence ends,” said Aprianti.
Dressed in a white robe and mask, Bashir was accompanied by the National Police’s counter-terrorism squad, known as Densus 88, as he left Gunung Sindur prison in the city of Bogor in West Java at dawn, Bashir’s son, Abdul, told me. Rohim, to The Associated Press.
He said the family, lawyers and a medical team accompanied Bashir to his home at the Islamic boarding school he co-founded in the city of Solo, about 540 kilometers east of the capital, Jakarta.
Rohim said the family had agreed with authorities not to hold celebrations to welcome Bashir.
“I just want to keep my dad away from the crowds during the coronavirus pandemic,” said Rohim. He will rest alone and join his family until the outbreak is over. There will certainly be no other activities for him. ”
School spokesman Endro Sudarsono said there were no welcome events because “we have agreed with the authorities to keep a large crowd away to stop the spread of the coronavirus.”
Police removed five large welcome signs and dozens of smaller signs saying they would attract people and replaced them with a single banner announcing there would be no celebrations.
National police spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan said the police would be monitoring Bashir’s activities.
In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison described Bashir’s release as “heartbreaking” and said the government had long called for tougher sentences against those behind the bombing.
“Conviction decisions… as we know, are matters for the Indonesian justice system and we must respect the decisions they make,” Morrison said Friday.
He said that while Bashir’s release was in line with the Indonesian legal system, “it does not make it easier for any Australian to accept that … ultimately those responsible for the Australian murder would now be free. Sometimes it is not a fair world. And that’s one of the hardest things to deal with. “
Indonesian authorities struggled to prove Bashir’s involvement in the Bali bombings and fought multiple battles to uphold convictions on other charges. Prosecutors were unable to prove a range of terrorism-related allegations, a treason conviction was overturned, and a conviction for falsifying documents was considered light.
On his release from prison in 2004, he was arrested and charged again with leading Jemaah Islamiyah and blessing the Bali bombings. A court convicted him of leading the group, but sentenced him to 30 months for conspiracy in the bombing.
After his release in 2006, he resumed teaching at the Al-Mukmin boarding school which he co-founded in 1972 and traveled the country to deliver fiery sermons.
The school became a militant production line under the influence of Bashir, radicalizing a generation of students. Many later terrorized Indonesia with bombings and attacks aimed at establishing an Islamic caliphate and damaging the country’s reputation for tolerance.
In speeches, Bashir said that Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and three militants sentenced to death for the Bali bombings were not terrorists, but “soldiers in Allah’s army.”
A court banned Jemaah Islamiyah in 2008, and the group was weakened by continued suppression of militants by the Indonesian anti-terrorist police with support from the US and Australia.
A raid on the camp in 2010, which Bashir helped fund, was a crushing blow to radical networks in Indonesia and forced changes in the mission of Islamic extremists. Rather than targeting Western people and symbols, the militants targeted Indonesians who were seen as “infidels”, such as the police, anti-terrorism squads, lawmakers and others who were seen as obstacles to transforming the secular country into an Islamic one. is under Sharia. More recently, militants have been inspired by attacks by Islamic State groups abroad.
Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, which closely monitors Southeast Asian militant Muslim groups, said Bashir’s release is unlikely to increase the risk of terrorism in Indonesia, as many potential terrorists are too young today. to remember. the Jemaah Islamiyah bombing campaign that took place while Bashir was the leader.
“Extremist cells are much more broken than when Bashir went to jail,” she said, adding that Bashir has not written anything that could be used as teaching material for radical groups.
“In addition, with the government’s crackdown on ‘radicals’, I doubt Bashir will have much room for radical preaching, even if he wanted to,” Jones said.
Bashir was transferred from isolation on a prison island to Gunung Sindur prison in 2016 for age and health reasons and was hospitalized several times due to deteriorating health.
President Joko Widodo almost granted a request for his early release on humanitarian grounds in 2019, but turned himself back after protests from the Australian government and relatives of the victims of the Bali bombings.
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Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report.