Indonesia orders review of early release for cleric linked to Bali bombings
22 January, 2019
Indonesia on Tuesday (Jan 22) ordered a review of the decision to grant early release to a radical Muslim cleric linked to the 2002 Bali bombings, after news of the plan provoked criticism and pressure from the Australian Prime Minister.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo had announced on Friday that Abu Bakar Bashir, 80, would be granted early release on humanitarian grounds, citing his old age and poor health.
On Tuesday, Indonesian security minister Wiranto said the government was reviewing the unconditional release.
"The president has ordered the relevant officials to immediately conduct a more in-depth and comprehensive study to respond to the request," Wiranto said in a Facebook post.
He added that authorities were "weighing up aspects like the Pancasila", the secular state ideology to which every convict is required to pledge allegiance, but which Bashir has repeatedly refused to acknowledge.
INTERVENTION BY AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER
Bashir is considered the spiritual leader of the Islamist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), was convicted and jailed for 15 years in 2010 under anti-terrorism laws for links to militant training camps in Aceh province.
Although linked to the Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people, Bashir was not convicted for them. Many Australians were among the dead and Canberra has urged against leniency for Bashir.
"We have been very clear about the need to ensure that as part of our joint counter-terrorism efforts … that Abu Bakar Bashir would not be in any position or in anyway able to influence or incite anything," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Cairns in northeastern Queensland on Monday.
"We have been consistent ... about our concerns about Abu Bakar Bashir and that he should serve what the Indonesian justice system has delivered to him as his sentence," he added.
"Australians died horrifically on that night and I think Australians everywhere would be expecting that this matter was treated with the utmost seriousness."
Meanwhile, Bashir's lawyers had earlier said he was eligible for early release because he had served more than a third of his sentence, but that he had refused to sign documents detailing the requirements for his probation.
Security officials have previously raised concerns about the cleric's influence in radical networks. In 2016, police moved him from a maximum-security prison on Nusakambangan island in Central Java to Bogor.
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