Author: Michael Sheridan, Jakarta
Publication: The Sunday Times
Date: July 30, 2006
URL: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2291200,00.html
Bombers' mentor plots rise of 'Allahcracy'
The venerable preacher named as a terrorist
leader by the United States had a twinkle in his eye as he talked of his new
mission to convert Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim nation, into what
he calls an "Allahcracy".
Abu Bakar Bashir is a free man after serving
just over two years in jail for participating in the conspiracy to bomb two
nightclubs in Bali in 2002. The suicide attacks killed 202 people, including
88 Australians, 38 Indonesians and 26 British citizens.
He was in fine form, sitting with his lawyer,
Akhmad Michdan, and six followers round a table at Jakarta airport strewn
with the debris of a copious, if sober, lunch consumed at the expense of the
infidel press.
"Bali was a reaction," said Bashir,
who has learnt to measure his inflammatory words with care since our last
interview at his Islamic boarding school, three weeks before the bombings
on the holiday island.
"With regard to the bombings everywhere,
these are reactions by Muslims to defend themselves. Muslims are being tortured
everywhere from Afghanistan to the Philippines. So these reactions against
America are global."
Bashir, 68, was flying to Sumatra on the latest
stage of a celebrity preaching tour that has hardly stopped since he was released
from jail last month, to the fury of the American and Australian governments.
His followers murmured in indignant approval
at the words of their ustad, or teacher, several of them typing busily on
BlackBerrys or mobile phones as they did so. They chuckled when he joked that
he had turned down a speaking invitation from a mosque in Australia "because
I'm not 100% popular there".
"George Bush is trying to rot Islam from
within," Bashir continued, sipping a milkshake, "and America is
attacking Indonesian Muslims - with ideas. That's why I'm fighting America
- but only with preaching and ideas, of course."
Depending on your viewpoint, Bashir is either
a terrorist mastermind guilty of inciting suicidal young men to commit mass
murder, or a devout teacher victimised for espousing the fundamental truths
of Islam.
If the first assertion is true then the man
sitting across the table has been responsible for approximately 249 deaths
and hundreds of injuries in a wave of terrorist acts. These include the bombing
of 24 Christian churches on Christmas Eve, 2000, the Bali bombs, a suicide
car bomb strike on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003 and a failed suicide
bomb attack on the Australian embassy in 2004.
Indonesian prosecutors acting on information
from Asian and western intelligence agencies believed Bashir was the "emir",
or head, of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the regional affiliate of Al-Qaeda.
An official US government statement declared:
"As JI's top leader, Bashir has authorised terrorist operations and the
use of JI's operatives and resources for multiple terrorist attacks in southeast
Asia." It said he approved operations personally or through JI's leadership
council.
In practice, analysts have concluded, JI's
structure was almost indistinguishable from Bashir's overt organisation, the
Mujahidin Council of Indonesia, known as the MMI.
Prosecutors depicted Bashir's boarding school
in the city of Solo, on Java, as a terror academy. The logistical mastermind
of the Bali bombings, Imam Samudra, was one of Bashir's pupils and swore an
oath of loyalty to him in 1998, US officials said.
"Bashir's graduates read like a Who's
Who of southeast Asian terrorism," observed Zachary Abuza, an American
academic specialising in the subject.
Western intelligence agencies think JI's number
two is a man called Abu Jibril. He heads the MMI's "security wing"
and, Bashir confirmed, is a member of the organisation's board of trustees.
Both men and their organisations have been
designated as terrorists under United Nations Security Council resolution
1267, which forbids financial donations to them and imposes sanctions on their
travel and other activities.
But the resolution has been ignored by Indonesia.
One reason is that foreign intelligence services and the Indonesian prosecutors
between them managed to turn Bashir's case into a legal shambles.
The first trial acquitted him of treason,
despite what Abuza called convincing video testimony from a Malaysian witness
linking him to Al-Qaeda. A conviction for subversion was thrown out on appeal
three months later.
Bashir was found guilty only on old immigration
charges relating to a 13-year exile in Malaysia during the Suharto dictatorship,
which carried a minimal sentence.
He was released in April 2004 but under immense
foreign pressure the police rearrested him while prosecutors hastily prepared
to retry him under a new anti-terrorism law.
In that case, five judges acquitted him of
the Marriott attack. Finally, in 2005 the chief judge found he had been "proved
legally and convincingly to have committed the crime of evil conspiracy"
in the Bali operation.
The sentence was just 30 months and with remission
Bashir walked free on June 14 from Cipanang prison. Some Indonesian officials
bitterly blamed the Americans for the fiasco.
"We gave everything we had to the CIA
and got nothing back," said a senior Indonesian intelligence officer.
He said the Americans had been asked repeatedly for evidence from Al-Qaeda
detainees, but in vain.
Sydney Jones, an expert on JI at the International
Crisis Group, pointed out the court had "no clear, hard evidence"
of Bashir's direct involvement in the Bali crime.
As a result, Bashir is able to maintain all
the charges "are just lies" and Michdan, his lawyer, laughed as
he told how the CIA called on him to try to get information on his client
- who says he has never been questioned by foreign police or security services.
They are seeking a judicial review of Bashir's
conviction, while the ustad revels in his fame and uses it to campaign for
an Islamic state. His group, like Hamas and Hezbollah, has engaged in welfare
work - among tsunami and earthquake victims - and the "terror academy"
in Solo thrives with 2,000 pupils.
"The democratic system is not the Islamic
way," he explained, "It is forbidden. Democracy is based on people
but the state must be based on God's law - I call it Allahcracy."
The 202m people of Indonesia, who have voted
in numerous free elections since the fall of Suharto, disagree with him by
a huge margin.
Fundamentalist parties have failed to win
significant support and Islamists are now trying to advance their agenda by
pressuring politicians to adopt elements of sharia law.
Bashir, for his part, is prepared to proceed
by one conversion at a time. "Michael," he said, "please learn
more about Islam. Please give my regards to the Islamic people of England.
I counsel them to preach in an appropriate way. I say to them, 'Don't make
any trouble or disturbance'."
With one eye on his glowering followers, I
assured the ustad that I would do so.
