Abu Bakar Ba'asyir may go on trial soon
Abdul Khalik, Jakarta
The Attorney General's Office (AGO) is still scrutinizing the case files of Abu Bakar Ba'asyir and hopes to begin another round of court hearings in less than a week, a spokesman said here on Sunday.
"We are now analyzing Ba'asyir's dossier very carefully. It is possible that we can bring the case to court within a week if we see that the evidence is sufficient. We don't want to keep it in our office too long," Kemas Yahya Rahman told The Jakarta Post.
Based on the law, the AGO has 14 days to decide whether to return a dossier to police for further investigation or forward it to court.
The National Police submitted Ba'asyir's files with the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office early last week, claiming they found new evidence that the cleric was behind a series of bombings that rocked the country since 1999.
With the new evidence, the police declared Ba'asyir a terrorist suspect on April 16 and charged him with Articles 14, 15, 17 and 18 of Law No. 15/2003 on terrorism for allegedly planning, coercing, abetting and perpetrating terrorist attacks. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.
National Police chief of detectives Comr. Gen. Suyitno Landung Sudjono said that as the spiritual leader of the secretive group Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), Ba'asyir was responsible for planning terror attacks in the country between 1999 and 2002.
The JI is a UN-listed terrorist organization blamed for the Oct. 12, 2002 Bali bombings and the Aug. 5, 2003 JW Marriott Hotel attack in Jakarta.
Kemas confirmed that solid new evidence would be required to charge Ba'asyir for having a role in terrorism cases. Last year, prosecutors failed to prove that the elderly cleric had a role in terrorist activities, but the court jailed him for immigration offenses.
"We can't give you details right now because our prosecutors are working on it. But there must be something new in the dossier," said Kemas.
An expert on terrorism from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Riza Sihbudi, however, doubted that the new evidence against Ba'asyir would hold up unless other terror suspects, particularly Hambali, who is currently being held by the United States, was able to testify here.
"I think it is essential to bring other (suspected) terrorists currently in U.S custody to be questioned here in Indonesia. Otherwise, the trial will be a repeat of the one in 2003 when the prosecutors failed to link Ba'asyir to terrorism," said Riza.
He said that there was a similarity to the case in Germany, in which a terrorist suspect walked free because the U.S. government refused to submit evidence linking him to terrorism.
Based on that, the U.S. should help Indonesia provide evidence linking Ba'asyir to terrorism in Indonesia, he added.