Indonesia to release suspected mastermind of Bali attack from prison

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Radical Muslim cleric and suspected mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombings, Abu Bakar Bashir, will be granted early release on humanitarian grounds, Indonesia's president said on Friday.

Bashir, 81, considered the spiritual leader of the Islamist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI), was convicted in 2010 under anti-terrorism laws for his links to militant training camps in Aceh province and jailed for 15 years.

President Joko Widodo, who is seeking re-election in April, has been criticized by his opponents who question his Islamic credentials and accuse him of supporting the “criminalization” of clerics.

“The first reason is humanitarian. He is elderly and his health is also a factor to take into account,” Widodo told reporters, according to a statement from the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Widodo also cited security concerns, but he did not provide further details.

A legal adviser to Widodo's campaign team, Yusril Mahendra, said he had pressured the president to secure Bashir's release.

“This shows the public that it is not okay for Jokowi to persecute or criminalize clerics,” Mahendra was quoted as saying by Indonesian media. Jokowi is the president's nickname.

Many of the more than 200 people killed in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings were Australian and Canberra has previously called for no leniency towards Bashir.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Saturday he had been in contact with the Indonesian government.

“Australia's position on this issue has not changed, we have always expressed the deepest reservations,” Morrison told reporters in Melbourne.

The Bali attack prompted Indonesia to create its elite counterterrorism squad, Densus 88, or Detachment 88, which received funding and training from Australia and the United States.

It was not yet clear when Bashir would be released from prison in Bogor, a satellite town near the capital Jakarta, or what the conditions of his release would be.

Bashir's lawyers said he was eligible for early release because he had served more than a third of his sentence, but he had refused to sign documents detailing the requirements of his probation.

Security officials have already raised concerns about religious influence in radical networks. In 2016, police transferred him from a maximum security prison on the island of Nusakambangan in Central Java to Bogor.

(Reporting by Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Kanupriya Kapoor, additional reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; editing by Ed Davies and Stephen Coates)

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