JACARTA, Indonesia (AP) – An arson clergyman who inspired Bali bombings and other attacks came out of an Indonesian prison on Friday after serving his sentence for funding the training of Islamic militants.
Police said they would monitor the activities of Abu Bakar Bashir, who is 82 and is ill. Her son said Bashir would avoid activities outside the home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The slender white-bearded Bashir, an Indonesian of Yemeni descent, was the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah network, linked to Al Qaeda, behind the 2002 attacks on the tourist island of Bali, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, including 88 Australians, leaving a deep scar in that country.
Bashir was arrested in 2011 for his links to a militant training camp in the conservative Aceh province. He was convicted of funding the military-style camp to train Islamic militants and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He received a total of 55 months of sentence reduction, which is often granted to prisoners on major holidays, said Rika Aprianti, a spokesman for the prison department at the Ministry of Justice.
“He is released when his sentence ends,” said Aprianti.
Bashir, wearing a white tunic and mask, was escorted by the National Police counterterrorism squad, known as Densus 88, when he left at dawn from Gunung Sindur prison in the city of Bogor in West Java, said Bashir’s son, Abdul Rohim, to the Associated Press.
He said the family, lawyers and a medical team accompanied Bashir home to the Islamic boarding school he founded in the city of Solo, about 540 kilometers (335 miles) east of the capital, Jakarta.
Rohim said the family agreed with the authorities not to hold any celebrations to receive Bashir.
“I just want to keep my dad away from the crowds during the coronavirus pandemic,” said Rohim. “He will only rest and be reunited with his family until the outbreak ends. There will be no other activities for him for sure. ”
The school’s spokesman, Endro Sudarsono, said he did not hold welcome events because “we agreed with the authorities to maintain a large crowd to contain the spread of the coronavirus.”
The police removed five large welcome banners and dozens of smaller posters, saying they would attract people, and replaced them with a single banner announcing that there would be no celebrations.
National Police spokesman Ahmad Ramadhan said the police would monitor Bashir’s activities.
In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison described Bashir’s release as “distressing” and said the government has long called for tougher sentences against those responsible for the attacks.
“Decisions about the sentence … as we know, are matters for the Indonesian justice system and we have to respect the decisions they make,” Morrison said on Friday.
He said that while Bashir’s release was consistent with the Indonesian justice system, “This does not make it easier for any Australian to accept that … ultimately, those who are responsible for the murder of Australians would now be free. Sometimes, it is not a fair world. And that is one of the most difficult things to deal with. “
Indonesian authorities struggled to prove Bashir’s involvement in the Bali attacks and fought several battles to maintain convictions on other charges. Prosecutors were unable to prove a series of terrorism-related allegations, a conviction for treason was overturned and a sentence for falsifying documents was considered light.
Upon being released from prison in 2004, he was arrested and again charged with leading Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as giving his blessing to the Bali attacks. A court cleared him of leading the group, but sentenced him to 30 months for conspiracy in the attacks.
After his release in 2006, he returned to teaching at the Al-Mukmin boarding school he founded in 1972 and traveled around the country giving 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 provoking an Islamic caliphate and undermined 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 attacks were not terrorists, but “soldiers of Allah’s army”.
A court banned Jemaah Islamiyah in 2008, and the group was weakened by a sustained crackdown on militants by Indonesian counterterrorism police with support from the United States and Australia.
A 2010 invasion of the camp that Bashir helped finance 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, militants targeted Indonesians considered “infidels”, such as police, anti-terrorist squads, legislators and others who were seen as obstacles to transforming the secular country into an Islamic state governed by Sharia law. More recently, militants have been inspired by attacks by Islamic State groups abroad.
Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Conflict Policy Analysis, which closely monitors militant Muslim groups in Southeast Asia, said Bashir’s release should not increase the risk of terrorism in Indonesia because many suspected terrorists today are too young to remember. the Jemaah Islamiyah bombing campaign that took place while Bashir was its leader.
“The extremist cells are much more fragmented than when Bashir went to prison,” she said, adding that Bashir did not write anything that could be used as teaching material for radical groups.
“Furthermore, with the government’s crackdown on ‘radicals’, I doubt whether Bashir has much room for radical preaching, even if he wanted to,” said Jones.
Bashir was transferred from isolation on a prison island to Gunung Sindur prison in 2016 for reasons of age and health and was in the hospital several times due to his deteriorating health.
President Joko Widodo almost granted a request for his early release in 2019 for humanitarian reasons, but changed after protests from the Australian government and relatives of the victims of the Bali attacks.
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Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk of Canberra, Australia contributed to this report.