Islamic law forbids Muslims to kill fellow Muslims intentionally. This is based on a Qur’anic verse: “If a man kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell, to abide therein forever” (Sura 4:93). But unbelievers have no such protection. This from Reuters:
A young Islamic militant accused of involvement in last year’s bombing of a U.S.-run hotel in Indonesia told a court Monday he had targeted Americans and regretted that all but one of those killed were his countrymen.
Prosecutors charged Mohamad Rais, 28, with helping to organize the Aug. 5 bombing of the JW Marriott hotel that killed 12 people, including a Dutch man, and wounded 150. He faces the death penalty if convicted.“I’m remorseful because Muslims became victims. The ones who I targeted were Americans. Now I have to be accountable because I was indeed involved in the Marriott bombing,” he told the court.
Rais, whose hearing began Monday, is only the second suspect to go on trial over the Jakarta attack in which militants detonated a bomb-laden car in front of the hotel lobby.
The prosecution also said Rais had been a messenger of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
After a two-year training stint in Afghanistan, Rais returned home in 2001 with a message from bin Laden for the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who authorities say was leader of the Jemaah Islamiah group they blame for the Marriot blast.
“Bin Laden offered Abu Bakar Bashir to go to Afghanistan if it is believed the conditions in Indonesia are no longer feasible for Abu Bakar Bashir to stay,” state prosecutor Andi Herman said.
The prosecutor said Rais delivered the message to Bashir on September 13, 2001.
The 65-year-old Bashir was arrested after bomb attacks on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali in October 2002 and sentenced to four years in prison last September for taking parts in acts of treason.
An appeals court later acquitted him of the treason charges and reduced his sentence to three years.
The judge adjourned the proceedings against Rais until February 4.
The trial of the first defendant in the Marriot bombing case began in November in Bengkulu on the island of Sumatra. The man, Sardono Siliwangi, is accused of storing the explosives used in the blast.