In happier days
No sooner does he walk that he goes back into the slammer. "Spiritual leader" and terrorist Abu Bakar Bashir is set to be rearrested. From AP:
JAKARTA, Indonesia - The suspected spiritual leader of the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group will be re-arrested after he is released from jail on Friday, a police spokesman announced. The cleric's supporters have vowed to resist the move.Indonesian authorities earlier said Abu Bakar Bashir would walk free when his 18-month term for minor immigration offenses ends Friday, despite protests from the United States and Australia, which insist he's a terrorist.
National police spokesman Maj. Gen. Bashir Ahmad Barmawi said Thursday that there is new evidence against Bashir, including witness testimony about him attending a ceremony at a militant training center in the southern Philippines in April 2000.
"Investigators will detain Bashir after he is released from the Salemba Detention Center on April 30 because police already have strong evidence about his activities," Barmawi told reporters.
In March, the Supreme Court overturned a harsher treason conviction that would have kept the 66-year-old cleric behind bars for three years.
Any move to detain him could likely lead to protests by his supporters, who have vowed to resist any attempt keep him behind bars.
Dozens of Bashir's supporters have kept an around-the-clock vigil outside Jakarta's Salemba prison. They claim the United States wants him to remain in jail because of his vehement criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East. ...
Indonesians go the polls to select a new president in July, and many politicians are loath to speak out strongly against Islamic radicals during the campaign.
Many of Indonesia's top Muslim groups and politicians have spoken in Bashir's defense and demanded that Washington stop meddling in the country's domestic affairs.
Last month, U.S. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge claimed Bashir had "intense and deep involvement in the planning and execution of terrorist activities" and should be put on trial again. Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, called Bashir a "loathsome creature" and urged Jakarta not to release him.
Bashir founded a religious school, Al-Mukmin, in Solo during the 1970s. Several of the militants involved in the Bali bombings and other attacks have either taught at or had other links to the school.
:0D
Indonesia continues to play games with the grinning madman, to the detriment of its international reputation. When will the politicians learn that nothing they do will gain them support of the fanatical Islamists? A crackdown on terrorism would bring support internationally, economically, and from the majority that wants to earn a living, not fight jihad.
Indonesians aren't Arabs (bashir IS). Despite western fears to the contrary, hardcore Islam is unlikely to be successful in the archipelago. If you doubt this check out the enormous popularity of democratic elections in Indonesia today; Ruhollah khomeini is likely grimacing at this in his tomb. Indonesia's pernicious, hard-nosed, America-hating Islamist VP Hamzah Haz, reportedly polled below 5% approval rating recently. Indonesians are not the stuff theocratic societies are built on-- however threatening the present political situation may look to the outside world.
la'razh,
Bashir is not an arab, his family name is yemeni. And radical Islam is certainly on the rise in Indonesia.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0916/p07s01-woap.html
Bashir has now been rearrested. The circus act continues.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1083180192553
Regardless of his name origin, as a cleric that issues fatwas of violence and death, he is no better than a mafia don that sends out his minions to wet jobs, or hits. He is a murder contractor masquerading as a "man of God."
Surely Bashir is behind the attcks in Ambon and other parts of Indonesia.
The government will surely ask him to control the activies of his machete wielding fanatics in return for his release. In other words they know that they cannot unearth "new evidence" of his Bali involvement without opening a pandoras' box of attacks thrughout the country, since they would have to further imprison him because of international pressure.
The Ambon killings are a sample of what he can unleash.
So Bashir will walk thru "lack of evidence".
there will be a period of relative calm lasting perhaps a year.