Yo foolgit...another example of your great cuntry showing us the way
What a tosser your are...
Court overturns treason conviction From correspondents in Jakarta December 1, 2003
AN Indonesian appeal court has overturned a treason conviction against militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir and has cut his jail sentence from four years to three, prosecutors said Monday.
The attorney general's office said the court had cleared Bashir of taking part in a plot to overthrow the government but upheld his conviction for immigration offences and forging documents.
"The copy of the High Court's decision that we just received says the charge of treason was not proven," said office spokesman Kiemas Yahya Rachman.
The decision was dated November 10. Appeal court rulings are not made public when they are delivered.
The latest ruling was likely to further dismay foreign governments, who insist that the elderly cleric headed the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror group.
Bashir, 65, denies any links to terrorism and says he was framed by Washington because he campaigns for Islamic sharia law.
Analyst Sidney Jones, an expert on JI, called the ruling a setback in efforts to counter terrorism. However Bashir's lawyer Ahmad Michdan said he would appeal to the Supreme Court to have all charges dropped.
In September, after a months-long trial, a district court convicted Bashir of taking part in a JI plot to overthrow the government. But it said prosecutors had not proved that Bashir heads the network.
The court jailed him for four years rather than the 15 years which prosecutors had sought.
Australia, which lost 88 citizens in the Bali bombings blamed on JI, expressed disappointment at the time that Bashir had not been convicted of leading JI and had not received a heavier sentence.
JI is blamed for a string of bloody attacks including church bombings which killed 19 people on Christmas Eve 2000, the Bali blasts on October 12 last year that killed 202 people and the Marriott hotel blast in Jakarta that claimed 12 lives in August.
Police have arrested scores of JI suspects or sympathisers, including 34 for the Bali bombings and 12 for the Marriott blast. Three of the Bali bombers have been sentenced to death and others have been given long jail terms.
But police warn that fugitive suspects are planning further attacks.
"The more information coming out from people who have been detained, the clearer Bashir's role in JI is -- especially in the years up to 2000 but also a continuing role thereafter," said Jones, Indonesia project director for the International Crisis Group of political analysts.
She said it is "beyond dispute" that Bashir headed JI and it was a "huge mistake" on the part of the court to reduce his sentence.
"This underscores another problem, in that JI has not been banned in Indonesia. It makes prosecutions much, much more difficult and will haunt prosecutors in some cases yet to be tried," she told AFP.
The Indonesian Mujahideen Council which Bashir heads said it wants all charges dropped.
"We reject charges that ustadz (teacher) has made false statements about his identity," said council spokesman Fauzan al-Anshori. "We consider it an insult to a Muslim cleric.
"We have advised him to appeal to the Supreme Court and he has agreed to do so."
