Dismay over Bali bombing sentence
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Australia and the U.S. have expressed disappointment at the 30-month jail sentence handed to Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir for his part in the Bali bombing.
An Indonesian court found Ba'asyir guilty on Thursday of an "evil conspiracy" to commit the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
He was acquitted on the more serious charges of direct involvement in the Bali attack and in the bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people in August 5, 2003.
Australia and the United States consider Ba'asyir to be the spiritual head of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, which is blamed for the Bali bombings, the Marriott bombing and last year's blast at the Australian Embassy.
Intelligence officials say the group has cells across Southeast Asia.
Australia will ask Indonesian prosecutors to appeal for a longer jail term, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.
"It's of some concern to us that the sentence is as short as it is. We're disappointed about that. We'd like to see a longer sentence," Downer told Australian television.
"I have instructed our embassy in Jakarta to raise this whole question of the short sentence with the Indonesian authorities and to say from our perspective we'd like to see a longer sentence," Downer said.
"We ask that the length of the sentence be appealed in the Indonesian courts."
Washington also voiced concerns about the verdict.
"We respect the independence and judgment of the Indonesian courts, but given the gravity of the charges on which he was convicted, we're disappointed at the length of the sentence," Max Kwak of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta said.
Ba'asyir's lawyer, Wirawan Adnan, told CNN his client would appeal the conspiracy conviction.
"My client believes this is an unfair verdict and what we believe is based on invalid evidence. It's a very inadequate argument so we can not accept this sort of verdict. It is unfair, unjust."
Maximum penalty of death
Ba'asyir was charged under Indonesia's anti-terrorism law of planning and inspiring his followers to carry out the Marriott attack.
Ahead of the verdicts, prosecutors were demanding an eight-year sentence, which analysts saw as a possible sign of the weakness of their case.
Ba'asyir, 66, could have faced a maximum penalty of death.
Earlier, thousands of police officers formed a cordon as a smiling and seemingly calm Ba'asyir made his way into the courtroom.
The cleric stood and addressed onlookers in the court for several minutes before turning around and sitting to face the five judges in the four-month long trial.
Indonesian prosecutors and Western governments accuse Ba'asyir of heading the al Qaeda-linked group blamed for the October 12, 2002, Bali bombings and other terrorist attacks.
The cleric has maintained his innocence and denounced the allegations as a plot by Washington to silence his campaign for Islamic law.
Indonesia has arrested scores of al Qaeda-linked militants in recent years, but some critics still see the nation as soft on terrorists.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a U.S.-educated former military general, has pledged to crack down on Islamic militants.
During the five-month trial, only one witness testified that Ba'asyir was the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah.
The witness, Nasir Abbas, said he was a former operative with Jemaah Islamiyah and that Ba'asyir claimed to have met al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Abbas also said the cleric headed Jemaah Islamiyah and swore him in as a member in 2000.
More than a dozen others said they did not know anything about Ba'asyir's alleged terrorism links or portrayed him as a simple Islamic teacher.
Ba'asyir was acquitted in a separate trial last year of heading Jemaah Islamiyah.
He served an 18-month prison term for minor immigration violations, and was arrested on his release from jail. He has been behind bars since shortly after the Bali bombings.
Before that attack, Ba'asyir was chiefly known for his campaign to install an Islamic-based government in Indonesia and his criticism of U.S. policy towards Muslim countries.
He has little active support in Indonesia, where hard-line religious interpretations are unpopular. But some mainstream clerics and government officials sympathize with him, saying he is a victim of foreign meddling -- a charge Adnan repeated.
"It is politically motivated. At the least, I can say that the court has been under heavy influence from local politicians, as well as trying to please the international views," he said, calling Ba'asyir's conviction a compromise verdict.
-- CNN's Kathy Quiano contributed to this report
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
