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Cleric faces call for 15-year term

Indonesian prosecutors urged a court yesterday to sentence cleric Abu Bakar Bashir to 15 years in jail on charges including treason over his leadership of a militant Muslim group blamed for a string of terror attacks.

Scores of Bashir's supporters wearing Muslim skull-caps were silent as the demand was read. Earlier, they had defied a police order and cried Allahu Akbar (God is great) as Bashir walked to his seat in the tightly guarded courtroom.

Prosecutors charged Bashir with treason for trying to overthrow the government using Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the Southeast Asian network accused of carrying out the Bali blasts and now the prime suspect in a car bomb attack at a Jakarta hotel last week.

Bashir had faced life in jail. Key suspects on trial over the Bali nightclub bombings face the death penalty.

Bashir is also on trial for approving church bombings across the world's most populous Muslim nation in 2000 that killed 19 people and has been linked to an aborted plot to kill President Megawati Sukarnoputri when she was vice president.

Wearing a gold embroidered skullcap, a checked sarong, black jacket and white scarf around his neck, the 64-year-old cleric sat impassively during the hearing. He showed no signs of the ill health that has plagued him since being arrested last October.

"The defendant has been proven to have carried out acts of treason ... We demand he be jailed for 15 years," chief prosecutor Hasan Madani told the court, guarded by 150 additional police.

The cleric denies the charges and insists that JI -- seen as the Southeast Asian arm of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network -- does not exist.

Police have linked the cleric to the Bali bombings, which killed 202 mainly foreign holidaymakers, but he has not been charged over the atrocity.

In the wake of last Tuesday's blast at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, Western governments have warned of more attacks in Indonesia.

A suicide bomber killed 11 people and wounded 150 when he drove a car loaded with explosives similar to those used in the Bali attacks into the hotel.

A lawyer for Bashir, Mahendradatta, said earlier his client was mentally prepared for a heavy sentencing demand and had felt the Marriott bombing would affect the decision.

Bashir also felt he was being tried by opinion rather than facts of law, he added.

In an interview with El Shinta radio before the trial began, Bashir blamed the Bali and Marriott attacks on the CIA.

Before the trial opened, a senior police official told Bashir's followers they would be ejected if they shouted Allahu Akbar. They did anyway.

"You can say this in the mosque, not in the courtroom. Let the judge and prosecutors and the lawyers do their job," he said.

Court officials have said Bashir's verdict could come within a month. The first verdict in the trials of 38 suspects arrested over the Bali blasts was handed down last Thursday, with a court sentencing "smiling bomber" Amrozi to death by firing squad.

Bashir's trial and those in Bali have been seen as a test of Indonesia's determination to combat Islamic radicalism.

A number of witnesses have told the court Bashir heads JI, accused of wanting an Islamic state in the region.

A senior Malaysian member of JI testified on June 26 that Bashir had approved the church bomb attacks and had also called a meeting to plan Megawati's assassination.

Bashir's lawyers have dismissed that testimony.

According to the indictment, Bashir's treason is defined as leading efforts to oust the government during the period from 1993 to 2001, using JI.

Key suspects on trial over the Bali attacks, including Amrozi, have said they were disciples of Bashir.
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