Heru Andriyanto, Jakarta – Firebrand Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has been detained for four months, but his trial on charges of funding a terrorist training camp in Aceh seems to be getting no closer to opening.
The Attorney General's Office over the weekend returned his files to the police for "improvement." The files are needed by the prosecutors to prepare the indictment against him. "We have examined the documents but we returned them to police and told them to improve their case," AGO spokesman Babul Khoir Harahap said.
The conclusion, Babul said, was reached at a meeting held at the AGO's general crimes unit last Wednesday to examine the case. "We returned the documents to the police's antiterror unit, Densus 88, and we gave them two weeks to complete the documents," Babul said.
The slow investigation against Bashir appeared to back some people's suspicion that the police did not actually have strong evidence to slap terror charges on the elderly cleric, the attorney for Bashir said on Sunday.
"If police really had a case against Bashir, supported by convincing evidence and testimony, he would have been tried in his first month in detention," said his lawyer, Achmad Michdan.
"This case has been controversial since the beginning, because the arrest of Bashir was conducted in a way that went against principles of human rights."
Bashir was arrested in a daylight ambush by the antiterror unit on his vehicle convoy in West Java on Aug. 9.
He was suspected of involvement in the paramilitary training of an armed group in Aceh, illegal possession of arms, providing a shelter for wanted terrorist suspects and concealing information about perpetrators of terrorism.
He was charged under the anti-terrorism law, which carries the death sentence.
Police have said Bashir harbored Dulmatin, also known as Joko Pitono, thought to have been one of the masterminds of the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. Police killed Dulmatin in a raid earlier this year.
Bashir, 72, was first arrested in the wake of the Bali bombings and stood trial for treason and immigration offenses, amid growing suspicion that he was the spiritual leader of the shadowy terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, said to have links with Al Qaeda.
The court acquitted him of treason but found him guilty of the immigration offense. After serving 20 months of his three-year sentence, Bashir was released thanks to sentence cuts awarded by the government.
He was immediately rearrested on charges of involvement in the nightclub bombings on the resort island and the 2003 suicide bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, and sentenced to two and a half years for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings. He served two years.
Bashir runs a Muslim boarding school near Solo, Central Java, and is the founder of Jama'ah Ansharut Tauhid which advocates the imposition of Islamic Shariah law in the country.