SOLO/JAKARTA - Indonesian police removed a
radical Muslim cleric suspected of leading the Jemaah Islamiah
militant network from his hospital bed in central Java on
Monday as his weeping supporters and security forces clashed
outside.
Abu Bakar Bashir, 64, was flown to Jakarta and taken to a
police hospital, but there was no immediate word on when he
would be questioned about a series of Christian church bombings
and an alleged plot to kill President Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Supporters tried to prevent police removing Bashir, who
denies any involvement in terrorism, from the hospital in the
city of Solo as international pressure mounts on Megawati to
act against Muslim extremists following the bloody Bali bombs.
Witnesses said plainclothes police broke down the door of
Bashir's hospital room after three supporters locked it and lay
on top of their leader as fellow students fought police
outside.
The policemen kicked and hauled them off Bashir, put the
cleric in a wheelchair, pushed him from the hospital and drove
him away, they said.
Outside, hundreds of teenagers, tears streaming down their
faces, threw rocks and exchanged punches with police. Ten
policemen were seen bleeding.
After police drove away with Bashir, who has not been
accused of involvement in the Bali blasts which killed more
than 180 people although Jemaah Islamiah is suspected of being
behind them, an aide called for calm and most of his supporters
left.
"He has been taken, but everyone must calm down and show we
are good Muslims," said Irfan Awwas. "This was an abduction of
an preacher amid his own supporters. This was inhumane."
TEST FOR MEGAWATI
Chief Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono also
sought to cool the mood over Bashir's detention, which some
foreign governments have said could foment demonstrations in
which Westerners might become targets.
"We should not become emotional," Yudhoyono told a Jakarta
news conference. "Abu Bakar Bashir is summoned by the police
for investigation, not for punishment. He will not be declared
guilty or convicted before a court decides that."
Mahendradatta, one of Bashir's many lawyers, fumed,
however. "This was state terrorism," he told reporters in
Jakarta.
Another lawyer, Muhammad Assegaf, said Bashir had refused
to sign documents acknowledging his detention. Assegaf, a
prominent lawyer who has long represented the family of former
President Suharto, quoted police as saying the hospital in Solo
had pronounced Bashir healthy but said he needed four days'
rest.
Foreign diplomats see the investigation of Bashir, taken to
hospital with what doctors said were heart and respiratory
ailments, as a litmus test of Megawati's resolve to crack down
on Muslim extremists after the Bali bombings.
The world's most populous Muslim country has long taken a
soft approach to radical Islamic groups, partly to avoid a
backlash from moderates who might perceive any crackdown as a
response to foreign pressure.
But world leaders have urged Jakarta to move more
decisively in the fight against militants following the Bali
blasts, which killed mostly foreign tourists, about half of
them Australians.
Suspicion swiftly settled on Jemaah Islamiah.
Although investigators say they have not established a link
to Jemaah Islamiah, a police spokesman said they would soon
release sketches of three men of Indonesian appearance and
suggested they were now suspects.
"In one or two days, the investigation team will publicize
the sketches of the people suspected of being the
perpetrators," Brigadier General Edward Aritonang told
reporters on Bali.
When police announced last week they had the sketches and
that a hunt had been launched for them across Indonesia, a huge
archipelago of 17,000 islands and 210 million people, the men
were described only as possible suspects.
BID LADEN ADMIRER
Bashir, 64, insists Jemaah Islamiah does not exist,
although he is an open admirer of Osama bin Laden, the
Saudi-born leader of al Qaeda blamed for the September 11, 2001
attacks on the United States.
Jemaah Islamiah, which Washington has linked with al Qaeda,
has been accused of plotting bomb attacks on Western targets as
part of a jihad, or holy war, intended to establish an
independent Islamic state across the region.
Bashir was rushed to the Solo hospital six days after the
Bali blasts and was placed under detention there, but police
said they were not allowed by law to question him while he was
ill.
On Sunday he said he was feeling better.
He was formally detained after investigators returned from
questioning Omar al-Faruq, a self-confessed al Qaeda operative
arrested in Indonesia in June and turned over to Washington.
Bashir has said he believes the United States was behind
the Bali attacks, which he has condemned as a "brutal act."
Bashir has been at odds with Indonesian authorities before.
He was jailed in 1979 under former autocrat Suharto for
agitating for an Islamic state. In 1985, he fled to Malaysia,
returning only in 1999 after Suharto, who kept a tight lid on
militant and political Islam, had lost power and his subversion
laws were repealed.