An Indonesian cleric appeared in court on Thursday accused of leading the militant Islamist group responsible for a series of attacks including the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people.
Prosecutors read out a 65-page indictment accusing Abu Bakr Bashir of running Jemaah Islamiyah, a south-east Asian terror network, and of using his ”religious charisma” to incite followers to carry out attacks.
The primary charge against Bashir under the country’s anti-terror legislation accuses him of planning the August 2003 suicide bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, in which 12 people died.
A subsidiary charge accuses him of conspiring in the Bali attacks. The indictment alleges that Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, who was later convicted along with 35 other militants in the nightclub bombings, visited Bashir three months before the attacks to ask for his blessing.
Bashir faces the death penalty if found guilty in the Marriott attack, or a long prison term if convicted of the Bali-related charges.
Charges under the anti-terror law could not be brought against Bashir in connection with the Bali bombings because Indonesia’s highest court ruled the statute could not be used retroactively. The law was passed soon after the Bali attacks, in which many foreign tourists — mostly from Australia — were killed.
Bashir was not required to make a plea in today’s hearing. The trial was adjourned until November 4, when his defence team will present their initial objections to the indictment.
About 70 supporters of Bashir shouted ”God is great” as the 66-year-old cleric arrived at court wearing white robes and a prayer cap and flanked by armed anti-terror police.
”The charges are baseless. Everybody knows, even school children, that there is pressure from George Bush and his slave [the Australian prime minister] John Howard [to hold this trial]. All those people who do not agree with the interests of George Bush are called terrorists,” he told reporters before the hearing.
The trial, expected to last about five months, opened in a large auditorium in the agriculture ministry because of the high number of expected observers.
In another trial last year, Bashir was cleared of the terror charges but convicted of immigration violations. The verdict was criticised by the United States and Australia, which have led international calls for Jakarta to put him on trial again.
He was re-arrested after completing his sentence in April, and has been in prison ever since.
Bashir has little active support in Indonesia, where radical Islam is not popular, but he has received sympathy from some mainstream clerics and government officials who view him as a victim of foreign intervention in the country’s internal affairs.
The cleric has long campaigned for the introduction of Islamic law in secular Indonesia. He fled to Malaysia in the 1980s to avoid arrest by then-dictator Suharto, who brutally repressed Islamist movements, and returned to Indonesia in 1998. – Guardian Unlimited Â