Peter Alford, Jakarta – Densus 88, the Indonesian counter-terrorism police, used every day of the four months available to substantiate its charges against Abu Bakar Bashir before delivering him with its brief of evidence to the South Jakarta prosecutors on Monday.
The prosecutors have 60 days to finalise an indictment against the 72-year-old cleric who, if convicted, could be sentenced to death, though that penalty is highly unlikely to be imposed.
The Attorney-General's Office, however, wants Bashir in the dock as early as possible in the new year. The quicker the better, says South Jakarta chief prosecutor Mohammed Yusuf.
Nor are the authorities waiting until the trial to argue their case that Bashir was not just a religious inspiration and fundraiser for the Aceh militant training camp that was dismantled by Densus 88 in February, but the actual leader of the so-called al-Qa'ida in Aceh.
"In November 2009, Abu Tholud, with Dulmatin, Abdullah Sonata, Ubaid and Warsito agreed to increase the training in Aceh to military level and [to form] al-Qa'ida Serambi Mekah," National Police spokesman Iskandar Hasan told reporters yesterday morning.
"At this meeting they agreed that the amir [leader] was Abu Bakar Bashir. We have stated this all in his investigation report which we submitted to the prosecutors' office."
Abu Tholut, the alleged camp training co-ordinator and a Bashir acolyte, was, until his arrest on Friday morning, the only one of the senior Aceh plotters still at large. Dulmatin was killed in a Densus 88 ambush in March. The rest are in prison, at least two of them already on trial.
Immediately after yesterday's press conference, Indonesian television showed live coverage of 48-year-old Abu Tholut being brought to Jakarta under heavy security. The message from the authorities was clear: we have Abu Tholut and that proves Bashir's complicity.
Unlike Dulmatin, the preacher cannot deny knowing him. They met when both were in Cipinang prison in 2004, Abu Tholut taught at Bashir's religious boarding school near Solo, al-Mukmin, and later joined the cleric's above-ground and purportedly anti-violence organisation, Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid.
As previously in the case of the executed Bali bomber Mukhlas, Bashir's former student, the softly-spoken cleric denies knowing anything about Abu Tholut's alleged terrorist activities.
The younger man left JAT over "ideological differences", he said on Monday, adding approvingly: "Tholut is a holy warrior." On the day of Dulmatin's funeral, he said: "Dulmatin was a mujahed, even if I don't agree with his struggle and use of violence in the country in times of peace."
Of the Aceh training camp, his lawyer Luthfie Hakim said a fortnight ago the preacher denied any association with or knowledge of terrorist activities.
But once again: "According to ustad [teacher] Abu Bakar Bashir, what happened in Aceh is in line with what Islam teaches and is not a crime, not a terrorist act."
Bashir has already been tried for involvement in three of Indonesia's worst terrorist outrages of the past decade. He was found not guilty twice and convicted once, but acquitted on appeal.
In previous trials he has been able to remain mostly silent while his lawyers have exploited serious flaws and weaknesses in the prosecution's cases. He is a sinuous quarry.
The authorities' painstaking diligence before and since his August 9 arrest – and now the prosecutorial urgency and public theatre – underscores that for the Indonesian justice system's credibility, this will be the most important terrorism trial since at least December 2006.
That was when the Supreme Court overturned the preacher's conviction for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 88 Australians. By then he was already six months out of jail on remission.
The stakes are high not because the alleged Jemaah Islamiah co-founder is still a vanguard leader of Indonesian jihadism – he clearly isn't any more, analysts say – but because he still represents its ideals to millions of conservative, fundamentalist Muslims.
Bashir's trial will be a test of his own potency as a moral figurehead to those people and to mob-mobilising social extremists such as the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) and the Indonesian Mujaheddin Council (MMI), which are again sizzling with aggression against Christian churches and other "infidel" manifestations.
The stakes are high because the governments of foreign countries that lost citizens in the 2002 Bali bombings, particularly Australia and the US, which have given critical support to Indonesia's counter-terrorism programs, regard Bashir as vitally unfinished business.
Those governments continue to believe he was a key figure in the murderous conspiracy, though carefully distanced from the operation itself, as prosecutors charged in his 2004-05 trial but ultimately failed to prove.
The stakes are high because another bungled prosecution, or one in which the prosecution again succeeds with frail or discreditable evidence, would seriously harm what little remains of the judicial system's reputation.
And Bashir's public popularity, which has gradually dwindled since he walked out of prison on parole in June 2005 to a tumultuous welcome from thousands of supporters, would inevitably resurge, according to Noor Huda Ismail, once an al-Mukrim student and aspiring mujahed.
Of course Bashir knowingly supported the Aceh camp, says Noor Huda, who these days is a security-risk consultant and promoter of de-radicalisation programs to tame and turn detained Islamic militants.
"But if you know Bashir, he's the kind of person who cannot say no to his followers. If somebody told him about jihad activity, he's going to say, 'Good'.
"Because in his mind, jihad must be done, and there are many ways to do jihad. If the government fails to prove their charges against him, it will make him a hero again."
However, Noor Huda points out that Bashir faces the likelihood of conviction this time because of the relative strength of the present case. And there is no longer the solidity in militant ranks or depth of underground experience as when Jemaah Islamiah – of which too Bashir, its alleged co-founder, denies any knowledge – was in the ascendant before 2005.
Since then the US and Australian-trained and funded Densus 88 has been increasingly successful in splintering the militant groups and capturing, but just as often killing, the most senior active militants.
Already it appears several of the preacher's accused co-conspirators, including Ubaid and Abdul Haris, both allegedly involved in channelling funds from JAT into the camp, will testify about his direct involvement.
Al-Qa'ida in Aceh was a coalition of militant splinter groups, including Jemaah Islamiah remnants, forced by the police's relentless hounding in their Javanese haunts to to reassemble in a province where grassroots religiosity has been strongly resistant to militant extremism. Bashir, a Javanese of part-Arab descent, is alleged to have formed JI in 1993 while in exile in Malaysia from Suharto's New Order regime, when he was a bitter opponent of the president's Pancasila nationalist ideology.
He had escaped the country in 1985 while under investigation for the bombing of Borobudur, the reconstructed ancient Buddhist temple complex.
Thirteen years earlier, Bashir had founded al-Mukmin school with a group of friends including the Abdullah Sungkar, with whom he is also alleged to have established JI. Abdullah is credited by US intelligence with having made JI's original contact with Osama bin Laden and the al-Qa'ida network.
Returning to Indonesia in 1999, after Suharto's fall, Bashir re-established himself at the Solo school and as a leader of the campaign for the imposition of sharia law throughout Indonesia.
In the two years before the first Bali bombings in Kuta, Bashir was also becoming increasingly well-known for his violent rhetoric against Western influences in the country, and particularly against tourists.
It was revealed during a subsequent trial that the month before the October 2002 bombings, US officials had secretly and unsuccessfully pressed then-president Megawati Sukarnoputri to render him into American custody.
Although instantly under suspicion after the Kuta bombings, Bashir was initially charged in April 2003 with treason and other offences allegedly related to the wave of bombings on Christmas Eve 2000 that killed 18 people. He was convicted only of an immigration offence.
In October 2004, he was re-arrested and charged with complicity in the August 2003 Jakarta Marriott Hotel bombing, which killed 14 people. Bashir was in custody at the time of the attack.
For the first time, charges were also laid accusing him of conspiring in the 2002 Bali bombing. In March 2005 he was convicted of the Bali conspiracy and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail but acquitted of the Marriott charges.
With remissions for good behaviour, he was released from Cipinang prison in June 2006. Six months later, the Supreme Court overturned his Bali bombings conviction on appeal.
The nation's highest court does not enjoy a glistening reputation for jurisprudence but on that occasion it had little option but to acquit Bashir.
The South Jakarta District had convicted him on the evidence of a single witness, who testified the cleric had told the subsequently executed bomber Amrozi: "It's up to you; you know the conditions in the field."
The case being built against Bashir for when he returns to South Jakarta District Court, possibly as early as next month, appears harder to refute and it is unlikely he will be able to sit in silence this time.
So far, however, Bashir and his lawyers are playing the cleric's familiar game, refusing to cooperate in police interviews or respond to their allegations.
"The whole thing is a set-up and we choose not to respond to what they say," his lawyer Hakim said yesterday. "They have every facility they need to fabricate this case; we will see in the court what they can prove."