Singapore says disappointed by Ba'asyir verdict

Singapore says disappointed by Ba'asyir verdict

Reuters Singapore

Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said on Tuesday he was disappointed by a Jakarta court's four-year jail term for an Islamic cleric suspected of heading a militant Southeast Asian militant network.

"It's not the result which we would like to see, but it's the result which we've got to accept," Goh told British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview.

Indonesian prosecutors are appealing the verdict on Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, whose treason sentence this month was seen as too lenient in much of Asia and the West.

The prosecutors failed to prove Ba'asyir was the emir, or spiritual leader, of Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), a militant group blamed for the Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mainly Australians, last October.

"In Singapore, based on the evidence that we have, we will believe that he is the head of Jamaah Islamiyah," Goh said. "That's the intelligence that we have from the people arrested in Singapore."

Singapore was among the first nations to identify the threat posed by Jamaah Islamiyah. Thirty-one people associated with JI are held now in Singapore suspected of planning to blow up the U.S. embassy and other Western targets in the city state.

Prosecutors had demanded the prominent cleric be jailed for 15 years. Many saw this as tantamount to a life sentence for the 65- year-old Ba'asyir, who has suffered from poor health.

When asked if the Jakarta court came up with the wrong result in its Sept. 2 decision, Goh said: "I would say the result is fairly undecided."

A Singapore government white paper this year said Ba'asyir took over leadership of the group in 1999. Singapore has also linked JI to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, blamed for Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.