Jakarta – A court in the Indonesian capital on Wednesday sentenced an activist fighting for a referendum on self-determination in troubled Aceh province to one year in prison.

Faisal bin Saifuddin is guilty of spreading enmity and hatred against the state, chief judge Iskandar Tjake said in the verdict.

Prosecutors had earlier sought a two-year jail sentence for Saifudin, who leads the Jakarta-branch Information Center for an Aceh Referendum (SIRA), a civil movement campaigning for a vote on self-rule in Aceh province. Saifudin said he would appeal the verdict.

"Since the questioning process up to the trial there has been attempts to make SIRA comparable to GAM," Saifuddin told the hearing at the Central Jakarta district court. "SIRA is an anti-violence movement," he added.

The separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) has fought a guerilla war against Jakarta's rule since 1976. More than 1,700 people died in 2001 in skirmishes between GAM rebels and security troops, and 86 have already been killed this year.

The Aceh-based SIRA has held a series of massive demonstrations in Aceh and Jakarta to demand a referendum and the trial of military officers accused of human rights abuses during anti-rebel campaigns in the resource-rich province.

In 2000 several hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the provincial capital Banda Aceh in a pro-referendum rally organized by SIRA. Its chairman Muhammad Nazar was jailed for 11 months. He was released in October last year.

In a bid to quiet the clamor for independence, Jakarta last year granted Aceh greater self-rule and a larger share of oil and gas revenues. It also allowed the staunchly Muslim region to implement Islamic law. But President Megawati Sukarnoputri, a daughter of the country's founding president Sukarno, has vowed not to allow Aceh to secede.