Indonesian judges have rejected a plea to drop terrorism charges against hardline Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir and ordered him to stand trial for his alleged involvement in attacks including the Bali bombings.
Defence lawyers had asked the court to drop the charges against the 66-year-old, saying he had been cleared last year of involvement in terrorism. But the judges told prosecutors to start presenting their witnesses next Thursday.
"The exception by the defense team had to be turned down because the court documents which had been presented by prosecutors were clear and concise enough," chief judge Sudarto told South Jakarta district court.
Bashir is accused of inciting followers to carry out the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings in which 202 people died and of plotting last year's attack on the Jakarta Marriott hotel in which 12 were killed. If found guilty he faces a possible death sentence.
Foreign governments say Bashir led the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group, which is blamed for the Bali and Marriott blasts, for a suicide bombing outside the Australian embassy in September and for a string of other attacks.
An Indonesian court last year cleared the cleric of leading the group, which seeks to create an Islamic fundamentalist state in Southeast Asia, but police say they have new evidence of his leadership role.
Judge Sudarto, dismissing another defence argument, said his court had the authority to try Bashir since the Marriott bombing occurred within its jurisdiction.
At the end of the hearing, Bashir said he had expected the ruling would go against him.
His lawyer Muhammad Assegaf told AFP the latest ruling was "baseless" since Bashir had been in detention when the Marriott bombing took place in August 2003.
"Where is the logic that a person under detention could be connected or even have any knowledge of a bombing attack that took place outside?" Assegaf said.
He described the current indictment as "a recycled one since it used old, baseless statements from witnesses from last year's trial." The cleric was arrested a week after the Bali blasts and has remained in detention ever since. Prosecutors have said in their indictment that he orchestrated the Marriott bombing from his cell.
Unlike previous court sessions, only about 20 supporters attended Thursday's hearing. "God is great!" they shouted when judges ordered the trial to go ahead.
Bashir has described the indictment as "legal fiction" and said he had nothing to gain from acts of terrorism since they would only fuel interference in Indonesia by Washington.
The firebrand cleric has also rejected claims that in April 2000 he visited a Jemaah Islamiyah training camp in the southern Philippines to convey messages from Osama bin Laden urging attacks on America and its allies.
Prosecutors say several members of the group who trained there went on to conduct terrorist acts.
Among them are Malaysian explosives experts Azahari Husin and Noordin Mohammad Top, who are being hunted as key suspects in the Bali and Marriott attacks and in the Australian embassy bombing which killed 11 people.
The trial is seen as a test of new president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's commitment to stamping out terrorism in the world's largest Muslim-populated country.