Indonesia jails 10 Islamists for mosque bombing

Maardiansyah (L), together with other convicted Islamic extremists are escorted yesterday by armed police commandos from a court in Tangerang near Jakarta after the verdict

An Indonesian court yesterday sentenced 10 Islamist extremists to jail terms of between five and eight years over a suicide bomb attack on a police mosque last April.
Tried separately, all 10 were sentenced yesterday for their parts in a suicide attack in Cirebon, West Java province.
Musola, 35, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, was sentenced to eight years for “possessing firearms and preparing explosives to be used in the bomb attack at the Cirebon police mosque,” presiding judge Riyadi Sunindyo told the district court in Tangerang on the outskirts of Jakarta.
Dzulkifli Lubis also received an eight-year prison term for buying and supplying firearms, judge I Made Supharta said.
Eight other defendants were handed five to seven-and-a-half-year jail terms for their involvement in the attack, including delivering and hiding firearms.
Thirty people, mostly policemen and including the Cirebon police chief, were wounded in the April attack when a 32-year-old suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body as worshippers began their prayers.
Nails, nuts and bolts lodged in the victims’ bodies in what was the first suicide mosque bombing in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation of 240 million people.
Indonesia is struggling to deal with the threat of homegrown Islamist militants who oppose the country’s secular, democratic system and want to create an Islamic caliphate across much of Southeast Asia.
A series of bombings in recent years in the country have been blamed on regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202 people, among them 88 Australian tourists.