Ba'asyir nonviolent: Muhammadiyah chief
Ba'asyir nonviolent: Muhammadiyah chief
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
An influential Muslim leader testified on Thursday at the South
Jakarta District Court that he had not seen evidence of violent
behavior by alleged spiritual leader of the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI)
terror network, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.
The leader of the fairly moderate Muhammadiyah, the country's
second largest Muslim organization, Ahmad Syafii Maarif told the
court that although Ba'asyir adhered to an extreme view of
Islamic thinking, he, personally, had not seen that translated
into violent acts.
"I have not yet seen any evidence that Ba'asyir is an
extremist in his actions," Syafii told the court in South
Jakarta.
Ba'asyir is currently on trial for allegedly planning and
inciting his followers to carry out the Bali bombings in 2002
that killed over 200 people, mostly foreign holidaymakers, and
the attack on American hotel chain JW Marriott in 2003, which
killed 12 people, mostly locals.
The cleric could be sentenced to death by firing squad if
proven guilty of the crimes.
Syafii also claimed that the United States government had
meddled in the legal process against Ba'asyir.
He said that then U.S. Ambassador Ralph L. Boyce personally
asked for a favor from Muhammadiyah in the runup to the
legislative election in 2004 to persuade former president
Megawati Soekarnoputri to keep Ba'asyir in detention so that he
would not disrupt the country's fledgling democracy.
"We began talking and during our conversation, he asked me, as
a public figure, not to allow ustadz (Islamic teacher) Ba'asyir
to be released from detention until the April 5 2004 election,"
he said.
Syafii said that he turned down Boyce's alleged request.
"If I fulfilled Boyce's request, it would be similar to me
selling the sovereignty of this nation," he said. Ba'asyir was
detained at the time and kept in detention throughout the
election process.
Later in the trial, a former U.S. State Department translator
seemed to give credence to Syafii's allegations, when he said
that "a U.S. presidential envoy" asked Megawati to hand over
Ba'asyir to U.S. authorities.
Frederick Burks said that an unidentified envoy of President
George W. Bush accused the cleric of involvement in church
bombings in Indonesia in 2000 and asked for him to be secretly
arrested.
Megawati declined that request.
The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta denied that Washington had
attempted to influence the government in the Ba'asyir case.
"We have stated this before. If the question is 'Did we apply
any pressure to Indonesia over Ba'asyir, the answer is no,
absolutely no," spokesman Max Kwak was quoted by Agence France-
Presse as saying.
Ba'asyir first stood trial in connection with his alleged
terrorism activities to prove that he was the leader of JI and he
had tried to establish an Islamic state by first launching a coup
by planning to assassinate Megawati.
The court in September 2003 did not find him guilty for these
primary charges, but found him instead guilty of violating the
Immigration Law and sentenced him to four years in jail, but that
sentence was reduced by higher courts.
On the day he completed his sentence for the immigration
offense, he was rearrested in April last year after the police
claimed to have found new evidence for his alleged involvement in
the two bombings.