Indonesia's legal system is the "weakest link" in the nation's fight against terrorism, analysts said after a court slashed the jail term of the country's slipperiest terror convict.
A district court in June sentenced radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir to 15 years in prison for deliberately inciting terrorism and funding a new terror cell allegedly planning deadly attacks on Westerners and politicians.
The Jakarta High Court disclosed on Wednesday that it had overturned the conviction one week earlier and found Bashir, 73, guilty of a similar but less serious offence, cutting his sentence to nine years.
Bashir was once convicted of conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, but was cleared on appeal, and has several times avoided guilty verdicts or won slap-on-the-wrist punishments or sentence reductions. "Our legal system is the weakest link in this fight," prominent terror analyst Noor Huda Ismail said.
"Police have done quite a good job in arresting suspects and finding terrorists in raids. But once it gets to the courts, there are a lot of problems prosecuting a case."
Indonesia's anti-terror police unit, Detachment 88, has successfully weakened large extremist networks, killing some of south-east Asia's most notorious terrorists in bloody raids.
But Bashir has been particularly difficult to pin down because of legal rules, such as a ban on phone-tapped conversations as evidence in terror trials – although a new law will give authorities more power to bug communications.
"The prosecutors had phone conversations in which Bashir admitted he had funded the terror cell, but it couldn't be used as evidence. So I think this new law will make a big difference, as long as it's not abused," Ismail said.
Some key witnesses in Bashir's case refused to testify in court, and giving evidence via video conference made effective examination difficult, Ismail added.
Finding evidence against Bashir was challenging as the cleric allegedly only incited acts of terror and did not get involved in actual operations, political analyst at the University of Indonesia Andi Widjajanto told AFP.
"Under terror laws, you either have to be caught red-handed, or have at least three witnesses give evidence. There must also be either audio, video or documented evidence," he said. "That's why the court for the third time has failed to prove Bashir is directly involved in terrorism."
The high court admitted that it had showed clemency to the elderly cleric. "We also reduced the sentence as an act of humanity for this old man," court spokesman Ahmad Sobari told AFP. "The judges consider the nine-year sentence as long enough."
Nonetheless Greg Fealy, an Indonesian terror specialist at the Australian national University, pointed out that many convicted terrorists have received lengthy sentences in recent years.
"In most cases, the convicted terrorist has got around six to 10 years in prison, and that's been very consistent. In Bashir's case, there was strong evidence against him, so 15 years seemed fair and proportional," Fealy said.
But after criticism of the video evidence, he added, "we knew there would be a problem and that Bashir would appeal".
It is far from the first time Bashir has been the beneficiary of a court decision.
In 2003, he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for immigration violations but was acquitted of all charges related to a series of church bombings on Christmas Eve in 2000. He was released for good behaviour after serving just 20 months.
In 2005 he was convicted of conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings and served 26 months of the 30-month sentence before being freed when the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.
Members of the Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid cell in Aceh, which Bashir was convicted of funding, are optimistic the firebrand cleric will once again escape a lengthy prison term.
Its spokesman Son Hadi said: "This has happened three times before, so Bashir will take this case to the highest level until he is set free."