Australia requests appeal for light Bashir sentence

Mar. 4 - Update: 12:42 - Darn, I should have read Belmont Club earlier. Wretchard's post The Foundations of Barad-dur confronts the issue behind the issue.

Radical cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir was sentenced to 30 months for his part in the 2002 Bali bombing which killed 2002 people:

The radical Muslim cleric was yesterday sentenced to just 30 months in prison for his part in the deadly conspiracy that claimed 88 Australian lives in October 2002.

He was also cleared of four other serious anti-terrorist charges including the 2003 J.W. Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta which killed 12 people.

But the court heard no testimony from Mubarok, sentenced to life in prison, or Amrozi, sentenced to death. Mubarok refused to testify, and Amrozi never appeared in the makeshift court in the Agriculture Department's auditorium in south Jakarta.

The judges also found Bashir visited a JI training camp in The Philippines in 2000.

But they cleared the Islamist cleric of all charges connected to the 2003 blast at Jakarta's Marriott hotel, which killed 12 people.

[...]

One of Bashir's senior defence lawyers, Mahendradatta, told reporters the judges' finding was "illegal", because they had not relied on direct testimony to convict Bashir, but rather on police interviews.

The preacher has always denied any connection with terrorism, and repeatedly alleged the US and Australia pushed Indonesia into trying him. His lawyers have pointed out Bashir had been in prison for nine months when the suicide bomber attacked the Marriott hotel.

Bashir was jailed shortly after the Bali bombings, and he has already been tried and convicted once. Released and immediately rearrested in April last year, the preacher was charged under Indonesia's new anti-terrorism laws in connection with the Marriott blast, and under the penal code in connection with the Bali bombings. After a five-month trial, the judges from South Jakarta district court acquitted him of all five charges in connection with the Marriott blast, and two of the three charges connected to the Bali bombings.

Both Australia and the U.S. have condemned the light sentence, and Australia has called for the prosecutor to appeal the sentence.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said the issue was something Australians felt "very passionately" about.

"Our ambassador in Jakarta has already raised with officials in Jakarta that the sentence isn't very long," he said.

"We feel this as Australians because so many Australians died in the Bali bombing. We've got to, as a country, not just a Government, express the view on behalf of those whose loved ones were killed in Bali."

He believed a sentence of about eight years, as sought by the prosecution, would have been more appropriate.

Ba'asyir (Bashir) was found guilty of "an evil conspiracy" but acquitted of direct involvement. As he has already been in jail for 10 months due to his suspected links to the 2003 bombing of the Marriott, he will be released next year. He was acquitted last year of being the head of Jemaah Islamiyah, a terrorist group in Indonesia that has ties to al Qaeda. CNN barely covers the reaction: Dismay over Bali bombing sentence:

Australia will ask Indonesian prosecutors to appeal for a longer jail term, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.

"It's of some concern to us that the sentence is as short as it is. We're disappointed about that. We'd like to see a longer sentence," Downer told Australian television.

"I have instructed our embassy in Jakarta to raise this whole question of the short sentence with the Indonesian authorities and to say from our perspective we'd like to see a longer sentence," Downer said.

"We ask that the length of the sentence be appealed in the Indonesian courts."

Although the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, said that the light sentence could provoke futher terrorist attacks against Australia, intelligence agencies there have not reported an increase in threats, according to Attorney-General Phllip Ruddock.

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