World hails Ba'asyir's conviction, but sentence seen as lenient
World hails Ba'asyir's conviction, but sentence seen as lenient
Roberto Coloma, Agence France-Presse, Singapore
The conviction of an Indonesian cleric accused of being the clandestine leader of Islamic terrorists in Southeast Asia was welcomed in the region on Wednesday, but his jail term was seen as too lenient.
Some analysts said the four-year prison sentence on Abu Bakar Ba'asyir -- minus the 10 months he has already spent in custody -- could discourage Washington from handing over another alleged Indonesian terrorist leader, Hambali, in the near future.
Australia, which lost 88 citizens in the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings blamed on the Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) network allegedly led by Ba'asyir, was quick to express its disappointment at the sentence.
Prime Minister John Howard said he was "pleased that the Indonesian justice process appears to have worked".
"On the other hand, because many of us here in Australia believe that he was at least the spiritual leader of JI and therefore at least knew about the attack in Bali, we are disappointed that he wasn't convicted on that and didn't get a longer sentence," he added on national radio.
Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, speaking on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific economic conference in Brunei Darussalam, said it was difficult to predict the impact of the verdict on the security situation.
Abdullah said "we can only pray and hope that the situation in our region in the context of terrorism will be less and less threatening".
Daljit Singh, a senior research fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), said Ba'asyir's conviction "signifies that there's a big change from pre-Bali bombing days when sentencing him was almost unthinkable".
But the "relatively light sentence" also shows "continuing reluctance or unwillingness on the part of the Indonesian government to come down too hard on radicals" because of the looming 2004 national elections and concerns about a backlash among conservative Muslims.
The JI is blamed for a string of bloody attacks including church bombings, which killed 19 people on Christmas Eve 2000, the Bali blasts last October in which 202 people died, and last month's Marriott car bombing in Jakarta, which claimed 12 lives.
Indonesian judges said on Tuesday there was insufficient evidence to prove that Ba'asyir headed the JI, but found him guilty of taking part in a plot to overthrow the government. Prosecutors had demanded 15 years in prison.
With Ba'asyir and alleged JI bombers now in jail or custody, the region is awaiting the fate of another Indonesian militant, Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, now in American custody after being arrested by Thai police with the assistance of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Singh said the light sentence imposed on Ba'asyir "will probably discourage the U.S. from handing over Hambali at least for a while".
Bruce Gale, an analyst at Hill and Associates Risk Consultancy in Singapore, said the sentence "may not be the sort of thing the U.S., Australia or even countries such as Singapore and Malaysia would have wanted, but it is something that President Megawati Soekarnoputri and other mainstream political leaders can live with".
Indonesian culture "has always exhibited a strong tendency toward consensus and compromise rather than justice", he remarked.
Panitan Wattanayakorn, a political analyst at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, said Indonesia was sending a strong message that it was serious about cracking down on terrorism.
"In fact we might say that it is quite unexpected that the JI leadership at this level has been prosecuted and convicted in the way that it has been done," he said, but added that the light sentence showed the "limitations" of the Indonesian justice system.