Bill Guerin, Jakarta – Smack in the middle of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, hordes of international and local reporters have descended on a makeshift courtroom here to witness the long-awaited and pivotal trial that pits the state against one of its people, 66-year-old militant cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir.
The trial opened on Thursday, only eight days after the inauguration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the retired general who swept to power promising to crack down on terrorism.
Feelings among Muslims everywhere were running high this week anyway, angered and outraged over the "brutal" and "inhumane" treatment of Muslim protesters in Thailand. A total of 78 Thai Muslim protesters suffocated to death when they were crammed into army trucks for more than six hours after a protest on Monday at the Tak Bai district police station in Thailand's Narathiwat province. Others died of injuries inflicted by police, brining the total number of deaths to more than 80. "They packed them like sardines into trucks. It's inhumane during this holy fasting month of Ramadan," said Amidhan, head of the influential Indonesian Council of Ulemas (Islamic religious leaders).
A spokesperson from Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organization, called the security forces' actions "brutal". "What happened was state terrorism," said Dien Syamsuddin. "We strongly denounce it."
Meanwhile, outside the court, an auditorium at the Agriculture Ministry in South Jakarta, hundreds of Muslims from various groups gathered, though a very large police presence ensured there was little disturbance. Inside, scores of Ba'asyir's supporters shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), as police packing M-16 assault rifles led the cleric to his chair in front of the judges.
In the 65-page indictment, which took three hours to read out, Ba'asyir was charged with a string of offences. Some charges relate to the Jakarta JW Marriott Hotel bombing last August when 12 people were killed, as well as the establishment of a training camp on the Philippine island of Mindanao and the discovery of a cache of explosives in July this year.
Though the offenses theoretically all come under stringent anti-terrorism legislation passed in the wake of the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, Ba'asyir cannot be charged for those attacks under that legislation, because of a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that the legislation, passed after those attacks, could not be applied retroactively. He has instead been charged on criminal counts related to Bali under the country's criminal code.
The case for the prosecution rests on proving that Ba'asyir is or was the spiritual leader of the regional terrorism network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) – and therefore must have known about that attacks, even if he did not actually plan them.
He is charged with ordering a fatwa, or religious decree from Osama bin Laden to wage war against and to kill Americans and their allies, to be disseminated among JI members. Although an avowed supporter of Osama bin Laden, Ba'asyir has consistently denied any involvement in JI and insists all the accusations against him are part of a US-led conspiracy to discredit Islam.
Though the majority of Indonesian Muslims are moderates, militants like Ba'asyir, who also heads the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), which wants to turn Indonesia into a religious state ruled by Islamic law, feed on the anti-Western sentiment spawned by the earlier demonizing of Islam by the American press and the insensitive use of words like "crusade" by the US leadership. Many Indonesians see the West as always having an ulterior motive and bent on world domination. You are either against terrorism or with it, said the West's new Charlemagne, US President George W Bush, not long after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
Conversely, Western misconceptions of Islam in Indonesia, particularly the tendency to equate Islam with extremism, help give radical groups an edge of credence in mainstream society.
True to form, Ba'asyir, just before the end of the session, launched into a tirade accusing the Americans and Australians of forcing his prosecution. "I ask the panel of judges and the prosecutors to be careful of attempts from these two enemies of God, the United States and Australia," he told the panel of judges.
Ba'asyir's lawyers appear to have jumped on the same bandwagon. "We hope this trial won't be interfered in by a certain political power, especially a foreign one," Muhammad Assegaf, the lead lawyer in the defense team, told Reuters.
Little wonder that the US Embassy warned in a statement on Thursday that the "venue of the terrorism trial ... could draw large crowds", while also reiterating an earlier warning to Americans to stay away from "all stand-alone bars, clubs or nightclubs, which could be attacked by protesters". In April, Ba'asyir's supporters fought pitched street battles with police when they re-arrested the cleric as he walked out of Jakarta's Salemba prison after serving 18 months on immigration violations charges.
US fails to lend a hand
Though the Bush administration has been exerting strong pressure on Jakarta to prosecute Ba'asyir, it has steadfastly refused to help the prosecutors.
Some of the allegations against Ba'asyir come from suspected terrorist mastermind Hambali, alias Riduan Isamuddin, al-Qaeda's operational point man in Southeast Asia. According to a report from the 9-11 Commission, the US federal commission that probed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Hambali told American interrogators that he had pledged his loyalty to and got his orders from Ba'asyir. Hambali was seized in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation in Bangkok in August 2003 and has since been held by the Americans at a secret location.
More than a year later Indonesian police have still not been allowed to interrogate him directly, which means, ironically, that prosecutors cannot introduce the Hambali allegations in court without his actually being present as a witness, to give Ba'asyir's lawyers an opportunity to cross-examine him.
According to the charges against Ba'asyir, a month before the Bali blasts Ba'asyir met with the infamous "smiling bomber" Amrozi, later sentenced to death after being convicted of involvement in the bombings, and discussed plans for an attack.
Militants who confessed to involvement in the Marriott bombing claimed the US-owned hotel was attacked to avenge injustices perpetrated by Americans and Australians against Muslims in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Yet most of those killed in the blast were Muslims. The one foreign fatality was a Dutch banker. Seventeen people have now been convicted in connection with that bombing, which also has been blamed on the JI.
Indonesia's Islamic condition
Though some 89% of Indonesia's 220 million people profess a belief in Islam, the country is not an Islamic state. It does not represent the fundamentalist Islam of Pakistan or Iran, but a much more emancipated and diluted version of the ancient religion.
The country was founded as a secular state and remains that to this day, though it has, in the past, suffered violence at the hands of those flying the banner of Islam.
The earliest example of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam was the Darul Islam movement led by a Javanese mystic named Kartosuwirjo, who declared an independent Islamic state in West Java in 1948. Over the next 14 years, more than 40,000 people lost their lives and at least 1 million were displaced. The rebellion was crushed by founding president Sukarno in 1962 and its leader executed.
Later, during Suharto's rule, hardline Islamic groups were a major target of state surveillance and repression. Suharto's former State Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief Ahmad Hendropriyono was often linked to the brutal suppression of Muslims who opposed the regime. Various acts of violence and subversion were blamed on them, although some evidence suggests that intelligence agencies played a role in manipulating former Darul Islam elements.
Hendropriyono, a retired general, was also a key player in former president Megawati Sukarnoputri's "war against terror", with BIN identifying and arresting several suspected terrorists. He had demanded tougher laws and greater powers for intelligence agencies to combat terror. A key loyalist of Megawati, he resigned after Yudhoyono took office.
Militant groups come out of the woodwork
Following Suharto's downfall in May 1998, a number of militant Islamic groups came out of the woodwork. Laskar Jihad, the main group, deployed up to 6,000 paramilitary fighters to "protect Muslims" in the bloody Christian-Muslim conflicts in Maluku and Central Sulawesi provinces but later disbanded shortly after the Bali attacks in 2002.
The Indonesian Mujahidin Council that Ba'asyir heads – many members of which were outside the courtroom on Thursday, shouting anti-American slogans – and the Islamic Defenders' Front (FPI), in the news again for violence against "places of vice", were the other two main organizations that quickly became known for violent behavior, though they remained on the fringes of society.
There is still no evidence that either of these militant groups have committed terrorist acts, but both remain committed to the full implementation of Islamic law in Indonesia.
This squares with the alleged JI dream that a Southeast Asian Islamic caliphate can be established within the next 10 to 15 years.
Juwono Sudarsono, the new defense minister who held the same post under former president Abdurrahman Wahid, has described this dream, the so-called street Islam, as the main appeal for the Islamic poor.
The appeal of street Islam, and bin Ladenism, to several Islamic groups in Indonesia is shallow, but its very simplicity explains a lot for them, Sudarsono said, adding "I think the poor have always been easily manipulated by the angry middle class, who have become disillusioned with their respective governments."
Yet the solid foundation of Islam in Indonesia is still built on the two broadly based organizations, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama, which claim a membership of more than 25% of all Indonesians. Both are moderate in philosophy and support the country's religiously neutral philosophy of Pancasila, rejecting calls for Indonesia to become an Islamic state.
The radicals, including Ba'asyir, want Islamic law (Sharia) to be forced on the world's biggest Muslim population, and many claim they are ready to die to achieve this.
Domestic politics will play an important role in the outcome of this trial. A severe sentence for Ba'asyir, who could, in theory, face a firing squad, could mean that he would become a martyr in Islamic politics. On the other hand, for the public in general, a fair trial for the cleric would earn kudos at home for the president and bring the radicals down a peg or two.
The Indonesian judiciary, almost without exception, serves the country's vested interests, which at the moment can safely be assumed to be those of the new president. But with Western and Islamic opinion polarized on the opposite sides of the scales of justice, Yudhoyono and the judges will need to strike a balance between the need to send a strong signal to extremists that the fight against terrorism will be fought on Indonesian soil, regardless of considerations of religion and associated risks, and the real risk of alienating the West as he starts his five-year term.
[Bill Guerin has worked for 19 years in Indonesia as a journalist and editor. He specializes in business/economy issues and political analysis related to Indonesia. He has been a Jakarta correspondent for Asia Times Online since 2000 and has also been published by the BBC on East Timor.]