Indonesia will cut sentences of Bali bombers
Move comes as Australian prime minister warns of possibility of new attack.
Indonesia will ignore the strong protests of Australia and
cut the prison sentences of 27 men convicted in the Bali bombings, as well as their alleged spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir.
The Age of Melbourne reports that the practice of reducing the sentence of prisoners not on death row to mark religious holidays is common in Indonesia and in other Muslim countries. (For instance, Iraq and US authorities
will release 565 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad on Wednesday to mark the end of Ramadan.)
The Age reports that Australian officials have been working with their Indonesian counterparts to redraft Indonesian law so that no one convicted of a crime involving terrorism would be eligible for the sentence reductions. But the changes will not be ready in time for the end of Ramadan, and Indonesia was insistent that it would not change the practice before the new law is in place.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer travelled to Jakarta last month to persuade President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to block reductions for those convicted of terror offences. But Indonesia's Justice Minister Hamid Awaluddin says they'll go ahead according to existing regulations.
"The Republic of Indonesia, as a sovereign state, must not be dictated by the wishes of other countries," Awaluddin said this week. "... all prisoners will be given a sentence cut in line with their rights under prevailing laws and regulations."
Mr. Bashir had originally received a 30-month sentence after being found guilty of conspiracy in the 2002 bombings. His sentence was already cut by four months as part of independence day celebrations in August (sentences are also reduced on Indonesian national holidays). He will receive a one-month reduction this time. The
Herald Sun also reports that Bashir will apply to the Indonesian Supreme Court this week to have
his conviction thrown out.
The
China Post reports that Indonesian police report little progress in their investigations of the most recent Bali bombings, which took place last month. The fact that no one has come forward to identify the three bombers, who were killed along with 20 other people, may mean
the men were foreigners, possibly from Malaysia or the southern Philippines.
While Jakarta has had much greater success against the militant group Jemaah Islamiyah – Western experts say they have removed almost the entire top two levels of the terrorist organization through arrests and crackdowns – the cells that remain are much more autonomous and harder to find. The Post also reports that Indonesian officials do not see militant Islamic fundamentalism in the same way Western governments see it.
While the threat of terrorist attacks remains a key issue for many Western countries, authorities here have been distracted by much bloodier and potentially more dangerous conflicts that have shaken Indonesia since the downfall of longtime dictator in 1998.
In the past five years, about 5,000 people died in a separatist war in Aceh province, and up to 10,000 were killed in sectarian conflicts in the Maluku archipelago and Sulawesi island. The war in Aceh, where a truce was arranged earlier this year, threatened to further splinter the country after the secession of East Timor in 1999.
Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he had received intelligence about "
a specific threat" to his country. Mr. Howard told a press conference that he could not divulge details of the threats because of security concerns.
CNN reports that a few hours later, Howard introduced "an amendment to counterterrorism laws in the House of Representatives, in a bid to boost intelligence agencies' powers."
The amendment, which the government wants to pass immediately, has raised concerns among civil liberties groups, and even among some politicians and state governors. The amendment means people
can be charged even if they are only considering carrying out a terrorist act, but have not yet decided when or where. For example,
News.com.au, a News Corporation site reports, a person or group of people may be considering killing people or detonating a bomb, but have not yet decided which one to do, nor the date, time or method.
In a separate story,
CNN also reports that the amendment drew
criticism from intelligence experts:
[Aldo Borgu, an analyst from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra] said the government may be overstating the homegrown threat of terrorism, given that it did not increase the official threat level from medium.
"The problem the government is going to have is explaining the inconsistency between the potential terrorist threat but not changing the threat alert level," he said. The government has kept the threat level constant since it was elevated to medium in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
Despite questions about the timing of the announcement, News.com.au reports that state and opposition politicians decided to support the amendment, which means it could be law by Thursday.
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