IN FOCUS: How Indonesian prisons are battlegrounds for deradicalisation channelnewsasia.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from channelnewsasia.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Kusumasari Ayuningtyas/BenarNews
Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir on Thursday denied that he knew about the 2002 Bali bombings ahead of time and said he opposed violence in Islam’s name, as counterterrorism officials visited him as part of their monitoring of former terrorist inmates.
The elderly Bashir spoke to officials from the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) as they dropped by at his home in Sukoharjo, Central Java, for the first time since his release last month after serving a decade in prison on terror-related charges. His lawyer, Achmad Michdan, said Bashir told the officials he had never supported acts of violence in the name of religion.
Kusumasari Ayuningtyas/BenarNews
Radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, a co-founder of the group blamed for Indonesia’s deadliest terrorist attack, returned home to his Islamic boarding school in Central Java upon being freed Friday after almost a decade behind bars on militancy-related charges.
The former spiritual leader of al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) left a maximum-security prison in Bogor, south of Jakarta, in a van in the early morning, a spokeswoman for the Directorate General of Corrections said.
“He was in good spirits and good health,” Rika Aprianti told reporters, adding that members of the Densus 88 anti-terror police unit and the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) escorted the 82-year-old Bashir during the drive home.