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Prosecutors say Zulkarnaen is the previous army commander of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian militant group with ties to al-Qaeda
An Islamic militant who eluded seize for 18 years, was sentenced to fifteen years in jail on Wednesday after an Indonesian court docket discovered him responsible of hiding details about the 2002 Bali bombings from authorities and harboring different suspects.
Prosecutors beforehand demanded a life sentence for Aris Sumarsono, 58, whose actual title is Arif Sunarso however is best referred to as Zulkarnaen, for his position within the October 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 individuals, principally international vacationers together with 88 Australians and 7 Individuals.
Nevertheless, the panel of three judges in East Jakarta District Court docket stated they ignored the prosecutors’ first cost as a result of the prosecution interval had expired, they usually sentenced Zulkarnaen to fifteen years in jail for harbouring different suspects, together with bomb-maker Upik Lawanga, and for hiding info from authorities concerning the lethal assaults.
Indonesia’s Legal Code stipulates that the authority to prosecute criminals is abolished after 18 years.
“The accused is discovered responsible in a authorized and convincing method of finishing up an act of terrorism of third cost,” the presiding choose informed the court docket in a session that was held remotely as a result of pandemic, including that Zulkarnaen knew concerning the terrorism assaults however “didn’t inform authorities; as a substitute, he harboured a terror suspect.” Zulkarnaen has been detained since Dec. 10. The judges ordered that the time he has already served be deducted from his sentence.
Prosecutors stated they might attraction to a better court docket, whereas Zulkarnaen stated he accepted the ruling and wouldn’t attraction.
Police and prosecutors say Zulkarnaen is the previous army commander of Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian militant group with ties to al-Qaeda. The group is extensively blamed for the October 2002 nightclub bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali and assaults within the Philippines.
Zulkarnaen had eluded seize for 18 years after being named a suspect within the 2002 suicide bombings of Paddy’s Pub and the Sari Membership in Bali. He was arrested final yr in the identical southern city on Sumatra island the place Lawanga, a bomb-maker for the Jemaah Islamiyah community who eluded seize for 16 years, was arrested by counterterrorism police per week earlier. Lawanga was sentenced to life in jail final month.
Police have been tipped off to their hideout after interrogating a number of suspected militants arrested in earlier raids.
Zulkarnaen argued that though he was a frontrunner of the community’s army wing, he was not concerned within the operation of the Bali bombings, as he was centered on organizing his squad for sectarian conflicts in Ambon and Poso and within the southern Philippines.
“I did not even know when the Bali bombings would happen,” Zulkarnaen informed the court docket in his plea final week.
Throughout his trial, which started in September, different convicted militants within the 2002 Bali bombings, together with Umar Patek and Ali Imron, who have been sentenced to twenty years and life in jail, respectively, supported Zulkarnaen’s declare, saying he knew concerning the plot however didn’t play a task in its operation.
Police beforehand stated Zulkarnaen masterminded church assaults that occurred concurrently in lots of Indonesian areas on Christmas and New Yr’s Eve in 2000 that killed greater than 20 individuals. He was additionally the mastermind of a bomb assault on the official residence of the Philippine ambassador in Jakarta in 2000 that killed two individuals, and the architect of sectarian battle in Ambon and Poso from 1998 to 2000.
Conflicts between Christians and Muslims in Ambon, the provincial capital of the Molluca islands, left greater than 5,000 individuals lifeless and half one million displaced. The Muslim-Christian battle in Poso, referred to as a hotbed of Islamic militancy on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, killed at the least 1,000 individuals from 1998 to 2002.
Zulkarnaen was among the many first Indonesian militants to go to Afghanistan within the Nineteen Eighties for coaching. He later turned an teacher at a army academy there for seven years, Indonesian police stated.
Since Might 2005, Zulkarnaen has been named on an al-Qaeda sanctions checklist by the U.N. Safety Council for being related to Osama bin Laden or the Taliban.
The Safety Council stated that Zulkarnaen, who turned an skilled in sabotage, was considered one of al-Qaida’s representatives in Southeast Asia and one of many few individuals in Indonesia who had had direct contact with bin Laden’s community.
It stated that Zulkarnaen led a squad of fighters referred to as the Laskar Khos, or Particular Drive, whose members have been recruited from amongst some 300 Indonesians who skilled in Afghanistan and the Philippines.
Zulkarnaen was appointed the pinnacle of Camp Saddah, a army academy within the southern Philippines established for fighters from Southeast Asia, the Safety Council stated. He spent a decade on the camp coaching different Jemaah Islamiyah members.
He turned operations chief for Jemaah Islamiyah after the arrest of his predecessor, Encep Nurjaman, often known as Hambali, in Thailand in 2003.
America’ “Rewards for Justice” programme had supplied a bounty of as much as $5 million for his seize. He was the one Indonesian on the checklist.
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