Ba'asyir mulls challenging court verdict
Yogita Tahilramani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
In a bizarre turn of events, Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir is considering legal measures to challenge a 1985 Supreme Court verdict sentencing him to nine years in jail for subversion.
The verdict has only just been served upon him over 16 years after it was originally handed down.
Ba'asyir's lawyer, Mahendra Datta, said on Wednesday that his client was ready to face arrest based upon the verdict, but he was not going to sign the verdict's formal notification, and would instead take legal measures to try and overturn it.
"We could request the Supreme Court to issue a ruling annulling the verdict as the subversion law has been repealed. The second alternative is to legally demand a review of the verdict. Third, we could seek an amnesty from President Megawati Soekarnoputri," Mahendra said.
Apparently out of the blue, the Supreme Court has sent a notification to Abu Bakar Ba'asyir of a verdict sentencing him to a nine-year jail term for subversion.
The notification was dated Feb. 6, 1985 but was only received by the cleric this week, Mahendra Datta said.
"Indonesia, according to my client, is buckling under pressure from neighboring countries Singapore and Malaysia, and the United States as well, to put him away for good... over unsubstantiated beliefs that he is linked to terrorist groups," Mahendra told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
The Supreme Court stated that Ba'asyir had been found guilty of agitating for the establishment of an Islamic state. The verdict, which was issued under the 1963 subversion law, overturned a lower court ruling that halved a nine-year jail term imposed upon him by the Sukohardjo District Court in Central Java in 1978.
Ba'asyir had been tried for his involvement with Komando Jihad, a hard-line group which was fighting for an Islamic state.
With his jail term halved, he later ended up settling in Malaysia with his friend, the late Indonesian Muslim cleric Abdullah Achmad Sungkar, who was jailed in Indonesia on the same charges as Ba'asyir, and also had his jailterm halved.
Ba'asyir returned to Indonesia in 1999, after residing in Malaysia for some time as a preacher known for his hard-line teachings.
Indonesian Police have recently questioned Ba'asyir, who is notorious for espousing a firebrand form of Islam, over his alleged ties with international terrorist groups.
Ba'asyir also recently launched a billion dollar lawsuit in the South Jakarta District Court against the Singapore government for accusing him of being a terrorist.
"Why has the notification of the verdict only come now? Ba'asyir has been in Indonesia since 1999. The Indonesian government recently sent a letter to the Supreme Court that recommended that Ba'asyir's lawsuit (against the Singapore government) should be halted. If this isn't intervention, what is it then?" Mahendra said.
Foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa denied the allegation that the government had intervened in the court process.
"The Indonesian government did send a letter to the Supreme Court, as a form of a legal advice, that all foreign embassies enjoy immunity under the 1961 Vienna Convention," Marty told the Post on Wednesday.