Indonesia jails activist lawyer over Islamic radicalism
ABC News
A former Indonesian human rights lawyer who joined an Islamic hard-line group has been sentenced to three years in prison on charges of incitement with the aim to establish a caliphate in a secular country
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A former Indonesian human rights lawyer who joined an Islamic hard-line group was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday on charges of incitement with the aim to establish a caliphate in a secular country.
The three-judge panel at East Jakarta District Court found Munarman guilty of hiding information from authorities about militants pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group in January 2015 in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province, and instead “giving a speech inciting people to carry out terrorism acts.”
“The defendant does not support the government’s program in eradicating terrorism,” the presiding judge said in the ruling.
Munarman, 53, who goes by a single name, was the general secretary of the now-banned Islam Defenders Front, widely known by the Indonesian acronym FPI, which has a long record of vandalizing nightspots, hurling stones at Western embassies and attacking rival religious groups. It wants Islamic Shariah law to apply to Indonesia’s 230 million Muslims.
