An Indonesian man blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings could escape with just a few years behind bars.
The tough anti-terrorism law passed after the double nightclub blasts in Bali cannot be used retroactively against Umar Patek, leaving prosecutors scrambling to convict him of lesser crimes, from premeditated murder to immigration violations.
Patek, an al-Qa'ida linked militant captured on January 25 in the same Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces, allegedly told interrogators he made the explosives used in the 2002 attacks in Bali.
The bombings killed 202 people, including 88 Australians and seven Americans. They were followed by near annual suicide attacks on glitzy Western hotels, restaurants and an embassy in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
More than 680 militants have been rounded up, tried in open courts and convicted or executed under anti-terror laws passed in 2003, including 32 for their roles in the Bali bombings, according to police and prosecutors. In 2004, however, the constitutional court ruled that the law could no longer be used retroactively.
Patek will be the first big fish to test that decision. Authorities will instead use a Dutch colonial-era penal code to charge Patek with premeditated murder and a decades-old emergency decree to charge him with possession of explosives, said Rear Marshal Chairul Akbar, a high official at Indonesia's anti-terrorism agency. Both carry a maximum penalty of death, but getting a conviction will be hard.
"We waited nearly six months to have him deported from Pakistan because we are worried he'd get off after just a few years in jail," Akbar said.
Indonesia had hoped the US, Australia or the Philippines, all of which had reason to put him behind bars, would agree to take the veteran Jemaah Islamiah member. "But when that didn't happen," Akbar said, "we had no choice but to bring him home."
The nation of 240 million people only recently emerged from decades of rule by General Suharto, who led one of the 20th century's most brutal dictatorships. His military regime killed hundreds of thousands of political opponents.
When Indonesia came under pressure to pass anti-terror legislation soon after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, early drafts were shelved over concerns they harkened back to the days of Suharto.
The legislation eventually approved has been widely praised as both tough on terrorists and concerned with human rights. It is seen as a potential model for Egypt, another Muslim-majority nation with an authoritative past.
General Anton Bachrul Alam, a spokesman for the National Police, said Patek still faces possible prosecution for alleged crimes committed after the anti-terror law was passed such as gun smuggling, immigration violations and involvement in a jihadi training camp discovered in Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh last year.
"They want to get him on a series of sentences that could amount to him spending decades in jail, but getting there is not as easy as it seems," said Greg Barton of the Global Terrorism Research Center at Melbourne's Monash University.
Most terror convictions in Indonesia yield sentences of fewer than 10 years, he said.
Patek trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1990s. After the Bali bombings he escaped to the Philippines, where he allegedly helped train militants with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Abu Sayyaf group. He allegedly told Indonesian authorities he went to Pakistan in January to meet with bin Laden.