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Under tight police escort, Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir leaves a hospital where he was treated of respiratory problems
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With
additional reporting by Kazi Mahmood, IOL South East Asia
KUALA
LUMPUR, October 28 (IslamOnline) - Police in Solo, Central Java clashed
with angry supporters of the alleged terror leader Abu Bakar Bashir while he was being removed from his hospital bed, news agencies reported
Monday, October 28.
Hundreds
of supporters of Bashir, an elderly Muslim cleric of 64, flew stones
wounding one policeman while some 150 police officers tried to clear the
hospital grounds of the supporters, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Tempo
said.
Bashir
later reached the police headquarters at Bandara Ahmad Yani, Semarang
under heavy police escort. He was driven in a black “Kijang”, the
local version of the Toyota Unser car in Indonesia. Bashir was
accompanied by three police officers fully armed to the teeth, his
doctor and a member of his entourage.
According
to the latest reports, Bashir is already in Jakarta where he is jailed
in maximum security in order to prevent any “mishap and unnecessary
grouping of crowds if he was to be in a hospital again,” IslamOnline
was told.
Bashir,
who has been hospitalized for the last two weeks with respiratory
problems, was escorted in a wheelchair to a waiting police motorcade
that drove him to a nearby airport, then to Semarang.
Obserers
say the Bashir case is being treated with caution by the entourage of
President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who want a full report on the situation
in Solo and in Jakarta after the arrest of Bashir.
The
streets in Jakarta were still empty, with people busy with their daily
chores, though the name Bashir was on the lips of almost everybody,
sources told IslamOnline after the arrest of Bashir in Solo.
His
arrest, linked to the “confessions of a Kuwaiti citizen who bought
fake Indonesian Identification papers,” a member of the Indonesian
Mujahideen Council (MMI) told IslamOnline in an online chat on Monday,
is bound to create troubles for the Megawati regime.
Umar
Al-Faruq, the Kuwaiti citizen arrested in June in the city of Bandung,
several kilometers away from Jakarta, confessed in Washington to the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that he knew Bashir and that the
latter was the leader of the “terrorists” in South East Asia.
The
Reformed United Development Party (PPP Reformasi) has joined calls for a
probe into the extradition of terror suspect Omar Al-Faruq to the U.S.
and demanded that he be returned to Indonesia, the Jakarta Post
wrote on Monday.
This
is the third political party that has now called for the return of the
extradited Kuwaiti, whom several observers and politicians in Jakarta
say is a CIA agent who infiltrated the country to seek information on Bashir
and other Mujahideen groups in Indonesia.
“Find
out who was responsible for the ‘escape’ of Al-Faruq to the United
States,” deputy secretary-general of the party Miqdad Husein said on
Sunday, October 27, putting more pressure on Megawati to reveal how
Al-Faruq was sent to the U.S. and why.
He
also urged the government to bring Al-Faruq back to Indonesia to
confront another Bashir, who rejected all the allegations against him
and said he never met Al-Faruq.
Bashir
risks the death penalty if he is found. Police arrested him on the basis
on accusations made by Al-Faruq who said Bashir participated in the 2000
bombing of several churches in Indonesia.
The
“CIA element, Al-Faruq is now hiding in the U.S., he must be sent to
Jakarta,” a friend of Bashir told IslamOnline last week.
Similar
demands have been made by, among others, Justice Party (PK) president HM
Hidayat Nurwahid and House of Representatives (DPR) Deputy Speaker
Soetardjo Soerjogoeritno as well as the Party Bulan Bintang (PBB), all
Islamic parties in Indonesia.
Time
magazine said Al-Faruq had admitted to being the senior regional
representative of Al-Qaeda. Time also reported that,
according to a CIA report, Ba’asyir authorized Al-Faruq to use
operatives and resources from Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to carry out the
recent plan to bomb U.S. embassies in Jakarta and elsewhere in the
region.
Bashir
was removed from the hospital after objections by clerics close to Bashir
forced police to do so.
The
police were waiting Monday for a recommendation from his medical team at
Muhammadiyah Hospital in Surakarta in Central Java declaring him fit for
the police investigation.
During
the meeting with the clerics, police asked them to control Bashir’s
supporters so the inquiry team could do their job. Also attending the
meeting were clerics opposing the police investigation of Bashir.
Recovering
after nine days of medical treatment for respiratory problems, which
came about just hours before he was to be in Jakarta for questioning on
October 19, he said on Sunday he would resist any attempt by the police
to detain him after the questioning.
“I
will refuse, with whatever powers I have. If I am locked up, it will be
the nation’s problem,” Bashir warned from his hospital bed.
The
situation in the Central Java town has been tense as many Muslims,
especially Bashir’s supporters, rallied over the weekend to oppose his
status as terror suspect, which they said was declared at the behest of
foreigners.
“Bashir
does not condone violence. His supporters did not really come in force
as they were told not to. We want the police to continue their
investigation. And it will be proven that they were wrong,” the member
of the MMI said on Monday.
On
the other hand, the Vice President of Indonesia, Hamza Haz has urged the
Indonesian Muslims to be calm and to allow the police to do their job.
He said if there was violence, not only Bashir would be judged, but the
entire Indonesian people will be “fingered as condoning violence.”
Bashir
runs a school the Pondok Pesantren Al-Mukmin, in Ngruki, Solo. He has
around 2000 students from around the world and has defied the U.S. and
Indonesia to prove he was a “terrorist”.
