Niniek Karmini, Jakarta – Indonesia overturned a terror conviction Thursday against the militant Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who served 2 1/2 years for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed more than 200 people.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard said he was upset for the families of the 88 Australian victims but was powerless to help. Australia, along with the United States, publicly accused the aging cleric of being a top leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian terror group.
"Of course it is the court system of another country and we can't change that," Howard told the Nine Network television. "But it doesn't stop us feeling upset, and I know there will be a feeling of anger on the part on the parents and loved ones, and I am feeling for them this morning very much."
Howard noted, however, that those who carried out the bombings and those who were directly responsible for them have been convicted.
Bashir, 69, who was released from prison in June, has long claimed that the government in the world's most populous Muslim nation succumbed to pressure from the West when it arrested him soon after the Bali attacks.
He praised his acquittal on terrorism charges as an act of defiance against the United States and said Friday he was considering suing Indonesia.
Many countries and courts "are too afraid to stand up to the United States, but the Supreme Court decision is honest and brave," Bashir told journalists gathered at his Islamic boarding school in the central Javanese town of Solo.
Brian Deegan, an Australian lawyer whose 21-year-old son Josh died in the attack, said he had given up trying to understand Indonesian justice.
"I've steeled myself to the point that I will never understand the Indonesian judicial system," Deegan told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "I lost faith a long time ago in the entire process."
Thursday's ruling was in response to an appeal filed during Bashir's imprisonment.
Supreme Court Chief Judge German Hoediarto told reporters he had decided to quash the conspiracy conviction following testimony from 30 witnesses, but gave no more details. A written verdict will likely be made public soon.
The 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, were the first in a string of attacks in Indonesia targeting Western interests, with 2003 and 2004 blasts at the Australian Embassy and the J.W. Marriott Hotel and triple suicide bombings on Bali last year.
Bashir has always denied any wrongdoing, but acknowledges having known several Southeast Asian militants in the 1980s and 1990s who went to Afghanistan and trained there at al-Qaida-run camps.
Since his release, he has preached in towns across the country, espousing fiercely anti-American and anti-Jewish views and promoting his campaign to transform Indonesia's secular state into an Islamic one.