JAKARTA (Reuters) - The self-confessed head of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) went on trial in Indonesia on Monday, as the battle against a group blamed for a string of deadly attacks resumed in the court room.
By Ahmad Pathoni
JAKARTA (Reuters) - The self-confessed head of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) went on trial in Indonesia on Monday, as the battle against a group blamed for a string of deadly attacks resumed in the court room.
Zarkasih, 45, was arrested in June after operations involving the country's anti-terrorist unit, Detachment 88, which also netted the movement's alleged military chief, Abu Dujana.
The arrests were regarded as a major blow for JI, the group blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings, in which more than 200 people were killed, as well as many other attacks in Indonesia.
!ADVERTISEMENT!Prosecutors said Zarkasih, who has several aliases, had taken part in "a criminal conspiracy by aiding terrorist acts."
The indictment alleged that he approved the shipping of explosives last year to Poso, an area on Sulawesi island torn by Muslim-Christian fighting which killed about 2,000 people between 1999 and 2001.
The charge sheet said that Zarkasih, nicknamed Mbah, or grandfather in the Javanese language, received military training in Pakistan in the late 1980s and taught map reading at a Muslim rebel camp in the southern Philippines in 1998.
The main charge carries a maximum death sentence under anti-terrorism laws.
Zarkasih, wearing a yellow shirt and a traditional black cap at the South Jakarta district court hearing, did not make any comment. Under Indonesian law a defendant does not need to enter a plea at the start of a trial.
At a news conference after his arrest, police showed a video testimony in which Zarkasih said he was the acting head of JI.
Dujana went on trial last week on charges of keeping explosives and sheltering fugitives wanted for deadly attacks.
The International Crisis Group has estimated JI, which is believed to want to create an Islamic state in Southeast Asia and has previously been linked to al Qaeda, has about 900 members.
Controversial Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who has been accused of being the founder and spiritual leader of JI, was jailed for 30 months for conspiracy over the 2002 Bali bombings but was later cleared.
Abu Rusdan, another JI figure who admitted to being a caretaker leader, was jailed for three and a half year on charges of harboring Bali bombers. He was released in late 2005.
Police are still hunting Noordin Top, a Malaysian national considered a mastermind and key financer of some of the attacks. About 85 percent of Indonesia's more than 220 million people follow Islam. While most Muslims are moderate, the country has seen an emergence of an increasingly vocal militant minority.
Although there have been no major bomb attacks since 2005, police and some analysts say Indonesia still faces a considerable threat from Islamic militants.
(Editing by Ed Davies and Rosalind Russell)
