AFTER weeks of trying to link militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir to the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, Indonesian prosecutors have produced a huge charge sheet which offers a glimpse into the shadowy world in which he is alleged to have operated. Focusing chiefly on Bashir's alleged role in a deadly attack on Jakarta's JW Marriott hotel in an attempt to invoke serious terrorism charges, with a lesser accusation of indirect links to the Bali bombings, the charges carry few surprises. But what emerges from documents handed to judges on Friday and released in part yesterday is an intriguing account of how prosecutors claim Bashir coerced "followers" into carrying out atrocities long before they were committed.
The indictment says that as head of Jemaah Islamiyah, Bashir made the provocation in April 2000 when he inspected the graduation ceremony of the group's Hudaibiyah military training camp in the Philippines. During that visit, Bashir addressed militants with "instructions on jihad (holy war) and recounted his meeting with Osama bin Laden", the document said. The cleric then ordered a man named Imron Bayhaqi to "deliver Osama bin Laden's fatwa to wage war and kill Americans and their allies" to the group's regional commanders. April 2001 allegedly saw Bashir in the central Indonesian city of Solo. He told Bayhaqi, Malaysian national Muhamad Nasir bin Abas and several others to hit targets "belonging to Western infidels". Bashir's lawyers, who could be defending the cleric within two weeks, described the charge sheet as "complete hogwash that has many legal loopholes".
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