Jakarta, Jan. 8, (dpa/GNA) – Radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was released on Friday after serving nearly 10 years of his 15-year sentence for funding a militant training camp, an official said.
The 82-year-old former spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional militant group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings, had 55 months cut from his sentence for good behaviour, correctional authorities said.
Bashir was taken out of a maximum-security in Bogor, south of the capital Jakarta, in a van in the early hours of Friday, said Rika Aprianti, a spokeswoman for the directorate general of corrections at the Justice Ministry.
“Mr Bashir was released early in the morning because we wanted to avoid crowds like you to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” she told reporters.
The 2002 Bali bombings killed 202 people, mostly foreign holidaymakers.
Bashir was tried for links to the Bali bombings and acquitted, but was sentenced to 18 months in prison for falsifying documents.
He was arrested again in 2010 and sentenced the next year to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of helping fund a training camp for Islamic militants in Aceh province.
Security analysts said Bashir had severed ties with Jemaah Islamiyah and was unlikely to pose a threat.
In 2020, Indonesian police arrested dozens of suspected members of Jemaah Islamiyah, which was outlawed by a Jakarta court in 2007.
Those arrested include the group’s alleged military chief at the time of the 2002 Bali bombings, Zulkarnaen, and Upik Lawanga, whom investigators said was an expert bomb-maker.
In 2018, the government announced that Bashir would be released unconditionally because of his poor health, but it later backtracked and said he could be paroled if he signed a pledge of allegiance to the state ideology known as Pancasila, a condition which he rejected.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at that time urged President Joko Widodo to show respect for 88 Australians who were killed in the Bali bombings.
This week, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said that freeing Bashir would upset the families and friends of Australians killed in the Bali blasts.
“Australia has always called for those involved to face tough, proportionate and just sentences,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Payne as saying on Tuesday.
“Our embassy in Jakarta has made clear our concerns that such individuals be prevented from further inciting others to carry out future attacks against innocent civilians,” she said.
Mohammad Mahfud MD, Indonesia’s chief security minister, said the government would ensure that Bashir would not be allowed to incite others.
“It is his legal right to be freed because he has served his sentence in full,” Mahfud said.
GNA