Abu Bakar Bashir, known as the spiritual leader of al-Qaida-linked militants blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings, was accused of providing key support for the camp that brought together men from almost every known extremist group in the predominantly Muslim country.

They were allegedly planning Mumbai-styled gun attacks on foreigners in the capital, Jakarta, and the assassinations of moderate leaders, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

In March, a district court sentenced the 72-year-old cleric to 15 years in prison for inciting terrorism, but his lawyers appealed.

The Jakarta High Court quietly handed down its ruling Oct. 20.

“All I can say right now is that his sentence was reduced to nine years,” Achmad Sobari, a court spokesman, told The Associated Press.

“I do not know exactly what factors were taken into account in the judge’s decision.”

Bashir’s lawyer, Mohammad Mahendradatta, said he was awaiting official notification from the court. He stressed, however, that his client was innocent and should be freed.

Even nine years was an outrage, he said, vowing to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Indonesia, a secular nation of 240 million people, was thrust into the front lines in the battle against terrorism in 2002, when Jemaah Islamiyah, co-founded by Bashir, attacked two crowded nightclubs on the resort island of Bali.

Many of the 202 people killed were Australian tourists. Seven were Americans.

There have been several suicide bombings since then, but all have been less deadly, and the most recent was two years ago, something analysts attribute to a security crackdown that has resulted in hundreds of arrests and convictions.

Just as it appeared the country’s terror threat was diminishing, however, authorities discovered the jihadi training camp in westernmost Aceh province early last year.

Bashir, a potent symbol for the country’s radical Islamists, spent several previous stints in detention. But efforts to link him to terrorist activities have repeatedly fallen short.

Arrested almost immediately after the Bali blasts, prosecutors were unable to prove direct involvement, and judges sentenced him to 18 months in prison on relatively minor charges of immigration violations.

Soon after his release, he was re-arrested and sentenced to 2 1/2 years, this time for inciting the twin nightclub attacks. That charge was overturned on appeal and he was freed in 2006.

Last year, Bashir was brought in again, this time for his role in the Aceh camp.

Captured militants testified that the aging cleric watched a video as they trained and received written reports assuring him the $100,000 he’d helped raised was being used for the struggle to build an Islamic state.

Judges said, however, they didn’t have enough evidence to prove Bashir knew the money was going to be used to buy guns, ammunition and equipment for training, settling just on incitement.

Security analyst Noor Huda Ismail called the cat-and-mouse game with Bashir “the weakest link” in the war on terrorism.

“First police and prosecutors demanded he be given life or a death sentence, but there wasn’t adequate evidence, so they gave him 15.

“And now, again, they cut it to just nine?”

At the same time, other perpetrators like Bali bomber Ali Imron — spared the death sentence because he expressed remorse and has cooperated with police — will likely lose confidence in the judicial system.

While they’re serving prison sentences of 12, 15 years or life, Bashir, unrepentant, continues to see his sentences slashed, he said.

The cleric told reporters before the March verdict he didn’t know about the Aceh camp when it was operational but approved of its aim.

He said he was a victim of a U.S. and Australian conspiracy and that all charges against him were fabricated in an attempt to put him away for good. — AP

More than 8,000 of Freeport McMoRan’s 23,000 workers at the mine, near the town of Timika, have been on strike since September 15, demanding better wages and the company has been using contracted workers to meet the labour shortage.

“Production is halted from today due to safety reasons,” said Freeport spokesman Ramdani Sirait, quoting a statement byNurhadi Sabirin, a vice president at the company’s Indonesian subsidiary.

He did not say when work on the mine, one of the world’s largest gold and copper operations, would resume. An AFP correspondent at the site said that hundreds of workers were blocking entrances to mining operations.

Protests by striking workers turned violent last Monday when they clashed with police, who shot dead one worker and wounded at least six others.

In addition, three contract workers were shot dead in an ambush and three people wounded on Friday, police said.

The dispute, coupled with strikes at Freeport’s South American mines, has raised concerns of a copper shortage, but analysts say any impact could be limited by falling demand for the metal.

The strikers in Indonesia, mostly indigenous Melanesians, say they are the lowest paid Freeport workers in the world, earning between $1.50 and $3.50 an hour.

They are demanding an eightfold wage increase to a minimum of $12.50 an hour and a maximum of $32. The company has offered a hike of around 25 percent. — AFP

The 24-year-old from Bangkok reached the turn in one under before embarking on a five-under-par back nine — including four back-to-back birdies from the 14th which put him at the head of the field at Indonesia’s Palembang Golf Club.

Ilyassak, the elder statesman of Indonesian golf, carded a 68 to tie for second place with Thailand’s Tanutchan Puaktes. Malaysia’sNicholas Fung and Anthony Fernando from the Philippines were a stroke further behind.

“It is my best round as a professional. I felt very relaxed and holed a lot of putts from about 20 feet. I wasn’t thinking about my score too much and so when I finished it was only then I realized that I was leading,” said Khaoprathum, who turned professional in 2008.

In contrast to the young Thai leader, Ilyassak has over two decades of experience of playing in tournaments around the region.

“This is an old style golf course which I am very used to playing. It gives me a bit of an advantage although it will be difficult to keep this going against all these young players,” he said.

Leading first round scores (Indonesian unless stated):

66 - Somsak Khaoprathum (THA)

68 – Ilyassak, Tanutchan Puaktes (THA)

69 – Anthony Fernando (PHI), Nicholas Fung (MAS)

70 – Nasin Surachman, Ekalak Waisayakul (THA), A. Abrahamsyah

71 – Wisut Artjanwat (THA)

72 – Andik Mauludin, Maman Suherman, Marvin Dumandan (PHI), Khor Kheng Hwai (MAS), Pavit Tangkamloprasert (THA), Rinaldi Adiandono, Alan Chin (MAS), I Irmansyah, Ade Sebul, Johannes Dermawan, Choo Tze Huang (SIN), Kasiadi, Aminuddin Ali, Jamel Ondo, Supravee Phatam (THA) — AFP

Thailand's Somsak Khaoprathum, pictured in 2009, made four birdies in a row to lead a tournament for the first time in his fledgling career, ending the opening day of the Palembang Musi Championship on six-under-par 66

At a time when al-Qaida seems to be faltering, the recruitment of such an educated, somewhat mainstream following is raising fears that Hizbut Tahrir, an enigmatic global movement, could prove more effective at radicalizing the Islamic world than outright terrorist groups.

Active in 45 countries, Hizbut is now expanding in Asia, spreading its radical message from Indonesia to China. It wants to unite all Muslim countries in a globe-spanning bloc ruled by strict sharia law. It targets university students and professionals, working within countries to try to persuade people to overthrow their governments.

The movement’s appeal to an often influential part of society worries experts. Its goal of an Islamic state may be far-fetched, but it could still undercut efforts to control extremism and develop democracy in countries such as Indonesia, which the U.S. hopes will be a vital regional partner and a global model for moderate Islam.

“Our grand plan over the next five to 10 years is to reinforce the people’s lack of trust and hope in the regime,” said Rochmat Labib, the group’s Indonesia chairman in a rare interview with a Western reporter. “That’s what we are doing now: converting people from democracy, secularism and capitalism to Islamic ideology.”

Hizbut Tahrir, which means The Party of Liberation, is also raising its profile in the U.S. after operating largely underground since the 1990s. Its first major event was a 2009 conference, followed by another one in Chicago this June.

Starkly conflicting views swirl around Hizbut. It has been described as both a peaceful movement to restore one-time Islamic glory and a breeding ground for future suicide bombers, “a conveyer belt to terrorism,” in the words of Zeyno Baran, an expert on Islam in the modern world.

Banned in most countries, Hizbut remains legal in others, including the United States, Great Britain, Australia and Indonesia, where its leaders say it has spread to all 33 provinces. It is closely monitored everywhere, and often operates on the knife-edge of legality.

“The rhetoric they have goes to the fringe of democracy,” said Hans Joergen Bonnichsen, the former head of Denmark’s intelligence service. But the Danish Justice Ministry has twice asked the nation’s top prosecutor if Hizbut could be banned under Danish law, and both times the answer was no.

Its new frontier in Asia ranges from Indonesia and neighboring Malaysia to Pakistan and China, where Beijing has accused it of inciting violence among Muslim Uighurs in the remote west. It has also become the most widespread, and persecuted, radical Muslim group in Central Asia.

The Indonesia chapter is believed to be the largest, with a following estimated in the hundreds of thousands, according to Sidney Jones, an expert on Islam in Southeast Asia.

“They are a real force here. They are a greater long-term threat to Indonesia than people who use violence,” said Jones, a Jakarta-based analyst with the International Crisis Group think tank. “Collectively, hardline civil society can have a bigger effect than jihadists and terrorists.”

Her words are echoed by anti-terrorism expert Zhang Jiadong of China’s Fudan University, who said Hizbut is “more harmful than terrorist organizations, because it has more influence on ordinary people.” The group, estimated at up to 20,000 members in China, is more likely to foment riots or rebellions than terrorist attacks, he said.

Ismail Yusanto, the group’s urbane spokesman in Indonesia, insists that “we are a peaceful Islamic movement.”

“We believe people can be influenced by their environment, so so-called terrorists could be influenced by everyone, not just us. But Hizbut itself is committed to not being violent. There is no evidence,” he says, when asked whether some adherents later veer to violence.

The claims of nonviolence contrast with the movement’s fiery rhetoric, which calls for the annihilation of Israel — that’s what led to it being outlawed in Germany in 2003 — and exhorts Muslims to fight coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. One flyer shows a decapitated Statue of Liberty with New York City aflame in the background.

The U.S. State Department says the group “may indirectly generate support for terrorism but there is no evidence that it has committed any acts of terrorism.”

Hizbut followers may later “graduate” to terror under the tutelage of other groups. Often cited are the first British suicide bombers, Asif Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who attacked a Tel Aviv bar in 2001 and had past Hizbut links.

Reports have also linked Hizbut to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Sept. 11 mastermind, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al-Qaida chief in Iraq, but they have never been proven.

Hizbut calls for the establishment of a caliphate, uniting all Muslim nations under centralized Islamic rule in emulation of such entities that flourished in the past.

This is to be attained by changing Muslim mindsets to think beyond national borders, then pressing the message among political leaders, the armed forces and other power brokers until governments crumble.

Taquiddin an-Nabhani, a Palestinian lawyer who founded the movement in 1953, didn’t rule out violence during the last stage of creating the caliphate, or the possibility of fighting Western nations to protect it or expand it into non-Muslim countries. In earlier days, Hizbut staged failed coups in Jordan, Syria and Egypt, and it is now largely banned in the Middle East.

In Indonesia, Jones said, Hizbut appeals to those who believe that neither the country’s earlier dictatorship or present democracy has worked.

She said it has been able to infiltrate the top cleric body, the Indonesian Ulema Council, and local governments and exercises some clout on issues such as introducing sharia law, banning non-mainstream Muslim sects and opposing the operations of Western companies in Indonesia.

Unlike many Islamist groups, it welcomes women, who make up about a third of the membership, according to Ratu Erma, the head of its women’s organization. It also enjoys a following among parts of the elite.

“Some of them work by day in Jakarta’s main business district making the wheels of capitalism turn and after work talk about overthrowing the country’s infidel system. It’s one of the conundrums about the HT,” says Greg Fealy, an Indonesia expert at Australian National University who is adamant that at least in Indonesia the group is nonviolent.

In Malaysia, young hard-liners disillusioned with the moderating stances of mainstream political parties have turned to Hizbut because “they feel it is sticking to Islamic principles more closely,” said Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

Nawab, an expert on the group in Asia, said that Hizbut, which barely filled a meeting room in Malaysia in 2004, recently drew more than 1,000 to a conference and is present in every state but one.

Leaders and followers interviewed in both countries dodge questions about their numbers and inner workings, even the whereabouts of the current global leader, Ata Khalil Abu-Rashta, except to say he is based in the Middle East.

Behind its public face, Hizbut is built along Marxist-Leninst lines with secretive cells as key building blocks. Nawab says “students” may go through up to five years of arduous training and indoctrination to prove their commitment and become members. Some 60 percent don’t make the grade.

Hizbut members have been imprisoned in Russia, Central Asian nations and elsewhere, but some experts say the broad definition of terrorism in these countries — rather than any acts committed — landed many of them in jail, and sometimes before execution squads.

Within the U.S., opinion is divided. The State Department doesn’t name Hizbut as a terrorist group, but the New York City Police Department, in a document obtained by The Associated Press, identified it as a “tier one extremist group” in 2006.

The British government came close to banning the group after the 2005 London bombings, and government officials say membership has shrunk to fewer than 2,000 members. But Britain remains an important base for fundraising, propaganda efforts and recruiting senior members. Many leaders in Indonesia and Malaysia were once asylum seekers in the U.K. who got an education and made connections and then returned home.

Ed Husain, who described his time as a British member in the 2007 book “The Islamist,” said that globally the movement is “strong, robust, growing.”

“I still believe that the message and ideology of Hizbut Tahrir is as potent as ever,” he said in an interview. “Their antidemocratic, anti-West, anti-Israel and anti-Muslim governments stance remains firm. As such, they implant confrontational, radical ideas and thus attitudes among young Muslims.” — AP

Hopes that some on board the aircraft might be alive had been raised when a victim’s mother reported that her daughter had called her from the plane after the crash Thursday, and aerial photos showed the main cabin largely intact.

But after rescuers finally reached the site national search and rescue operations head Sunarbowo Sandi announced: “We received a radio response from our team on the ground that all 18 people on the plane had died.

“The passengers were still in their seats. A team is trying to cut through the aircraft and retrieve the bodies.”

As Sandi confirmed the deaths, scores of relatives who had gathered in Bohorok in North Sumatra, near where the Nusantara Buana Air Casa 212 went down after departing Medan, let out cries of despair.

Some passed out and were taken away on stretchers, while others lambasted the government for its slow response.

Reike Andriani, whose relatives on board the aircraft included a 20-month-old baby, said she was angered by the delayed rescue attempts.

“Why did this process take so long? They just kept saying that they would reach there soon, and they kept blaming the weather,” she said.

Another woman added: “They just kept saying the weather was bad, the weather was bad. They don’t have a proper system.”

For two days rescuers tried to reach the crash location by foot and by helicopter, but rough terrain, strong winds and heavy cloud and rains forced three teams travelling by land and several helicopters to return to Medan.

The Indonesian Transport Association said that the rescue teams had followed standard procedures and had done their best given the “impossible” conditions.

“The weather in Bohorok is extreme and unpredictable. There was heavy rain, fog and strong winds,” the head of the association’s aviation forum Suharto Abdul said.

The turboprop plane took off from Medan on Thursday morning heading for the nearby province of Aceh.

But it sent a distress signal soon afterwards and crashed at 1,100 metres (3,600 feet) in a mountainous area about 70 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Medan.

A search team on the ground built an emergency helipad Saturday to enable the bodies to be transported to Medan, where the health department and police will examine them before they are taken to hospital.

But Sandi warned that bad weather could again disrupt the process.

The incident is the fourth fatal air crash in Indonesia in the past month.

A helicopter chartered by US giant Newmont Mining crashed last Sunday in central Indonesia, killing two people on board.

Earlier in September, an Australian and a Slovak pilot were killed when their small Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft, which was carrying fuel and food to a remote area in Papua province, went down.

Another small aircraft, which was also transporting supplies to remote villages for a Christian organisation in Papua, crashed last week, killing its American pilot and two passengers. — AFP

National police spokesman Anton Bachrul Alam told reporters that the bomb was found near a church in Ambon, and is investigating any link to Sunday’s suicide attack in Solo town of Central Java.

The Solo bombing, which wounded 27 people, was the latest in a spate of attacks on minority religious groups in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Police has so far questioned 15 witnesses over the attack, the spokesman added.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Sunday the bomber was part of a network based in Cirebon, 300 kilometres east of Jakarta, where in April a suicide bomber attacked a police mosque, killing only himself and wounding 30 with a bomb of nails, nuts and bolts.

Authorities say they suspect the Solo bomber was a 23-year-old involved in the April attack, who sat through the Sunday church service, and later stood up and detonated a bomb strapped to his stomach.

But a DNA test is yet to confirm the identity of the bomber.

Most of Indonesia’s 200 million Muslims are moderates, but the country has struggled to deal with numerous attacks by radical extremists, like the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) which carried out the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. — AFP

Suratmi, who suffers from an ovarian cyst, has been taking a mix of herbal treatments harking back to the dawn of Islam, as well as undergoing exorcisms at a clinic in Jakarta.

She is among a growing number of Muslims in Southeast Asia turning away from Western medical care in favor of al-Tibb al-Nawabi, or Medicine of the Prophet, a loosely defined discipline based on the Quran and other Islamic texts and traditional remedies.

“I heard that so many people have been healed, so I hope Allah can help me. I followed His path here,” said Suratmi, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

The trend in Islamic treatments, cosmetics and toiletries is often associated with fundamentalists who charge that Western, chemically laced prescriptions aim to poison Muslims or defile them with insulin and other medicines made from pigs. Members of terrorist groups have been involved in Islamic remedies as healers and sellers, while some clinics are used as recruiting grounds for Islamist causes.

But the bulk of those seeking out Islamic clinics, hospitals and pharmacies appear to be moderate Muslims, reflecting a rise in Islamic consciousness worldwide.

“Islamic medicine carries a cachet that, by taking it, you are reinforcing your faith — and the profits go to Muslims,” says Sidney Jones, an expert on Islam in Southeast Asia with the International Crisis Group.

These Islamic products have become a big business with a customer base in Southeast Asia alone of roughly 250 million Muslims.

The industry’s advertising is as gimmicky as any in the West.

Capitalizing on the popularity of U.S. President Barack Obama, who spent four of his childhood years in Indonesia, one company produces a popular anti-stress concoction called Obahama — in a corruption of an Indonesian phrase for herbal medicine.

Siwak-F, also exported to the Middle East, is hailed as “toothpaste just like the Prophet used to use.”

The industry also is going high-tech.

Malaysia’s Petronas University of Technology is developing an application for mobile devices to query what Islamic remedies are recommended for anything from toothaches to depression, says Hanita Daud, one of the developers.

Like much of Islamic medicine, it’s grounded on the saying that “Allah did not create a disease for which he did not also create a cure.” This is taken from Prophet Mohammed’s teachings known as hadiths, which along with the Quran make frequent references to diseases, remedies and healthy living.

What is termed classical Islamic medicine developed in medieval times when it far outshone that in Christian Europe, and exerted a significant influence on it.

Practitioners say many ingredients in today’s treatments were used in Mohammed’s time, including honey, olive oil, bee pollen, dates and black caraway — which one ad claims is “a cure for every disease but death.”

In Indonesia, Islamic alternative healing really took off after a government promotional campaign in 2009, says Brury Machendra, owner of the Insani Herbal Clinic in suburban Jakarta where Suratmi and up to 400 other patients per month seek treatment.

Only one such clinic existed in the Depok suburb two years ago, but now there are 20, with 70 others waiting for government permits.

Machendra, who also is secretary-general of the Traditional Herbal Medicine Association of Indonesia, says most Indonesian Muslims don’t doubt conventional medicine. But he says Indonesia’s health services are so poor and expensive that many people seek out alternatives.

His clinic offers herbal medicine, a bloodletting treatment known as bekam and exorcisms in which a white-gloved therapist places a hand on a patient’s head while chanting verses from the Quran.

An exorcism costs about $12, while Machendra’s government-certified herbal products such as the purportedly anti-cancer BioCarnoma and anti-diabetes BioGlukol go for no more than $5 for 60 capsules.

He acknowledges that clinics such as his benefit from traditional Muslim rules forbidding certain ingredients and that many fundamentalists “tell people not to go to infidel doctors and say that buying Western medicine is forbidden.”

Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida-linked militant network that is essentially banned in Indonesia, is believed to have links to some herbal manufacturers and operate many of the country’s Islamic medicine clinics, International Crisis Group says.

But Jones says the clinics are aimed more at building solidarity among Islamists rather than recruiting militants.

Some doctors are trying to bring Muslim elements into the Western tradition.

“We practice evidence-based medicine but we incorporate the spiritual for both our patients and staff,” says Dr. Ishak Mas’ud, director of Al Islam hospital in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

This approach, he says, allows such normally taboo practices as abortions and pig heart transplants if these can save lives.

“I don’t agree with some clinics which say that, ‘This is Islamic, so it has to be good,’ ” says Ishak, who was trained in Australia and Great Britain.

The 60-bed hospital, which attracts patients as far away as Somalia and Saudi Arabia, stresses holistic diagnoses, refrains from giving definite prognoses since “death is in the hands of Allah,” and believes it is wrong to practice medicine with profit in mind, he says.

Fees are 20 to 30 percent lower than at most Malaysian hospitals.

“I am just the instrument of Allah and doctors must tell their patients this,” Ishak says. “You know doctors can be arrogant. They will tell you that they can cure you in five days and five days later you can be six feet underground. It’s not me that is healing. We are not powerful. In Islamic medicine, this is the key, the main concept.” — AP