Abu Bakar Bashir

THE fifteen-year sentence handed down to Abu Bakar Bashir yesterday is a major blow for the jihadi movement in Indonesia. Barring a successful appeal against the sentence, Bashir, now aged 72, is likely to see out the rest of his days in prison. The Indonesian police will try to follow up this verdict by ensuring that his prison conditions are not made too liberal.

Bashir has become the symbolic leader of radical Islam in Indonesia. It is hard to point to a possible successor. It is this that makes his fate important, rather than any leadership skills he may possess. His sentence will also help discredit his organisation, the Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid, or JAT.

Such a long sentence will also at long last undermine the Indonesian public's surprising tolerance for Bashir. The Indonesian media connived in this. They have contrived to give him celebrity status, much the same as happened with the three Bali bombers executed in 2008.

Advertisement: Story continues below Bashir was arrested last year on charges relating to the Aceh terrorist training camp. By the time of his arrest, several of the jihadis involved in the camp had told police interrogators that Bashir had supported the project and exploited his JAT network to raise money for it.

The Aceh camp aimed at the establishment of a secure base for an embryonic Islamic state, expanding from the northern tip of Sumatra to the rest of the island.

This was a fantasy that showed how isolated the jihadis were and how limited in their understanding of Indonesian society. It is puzzling why Bashir, usually a canny player, should have involved himself with this project. Given his age, he may have considered it his last chance to see an Islamic state in Indonesia.

The testimony from some of Bashir's JAT associates seemed so compelling the prosecution team had no hesitation in demanding life imprisonment for him in May. One weakness, however, was that the chief potential witness against Bashir, a Bali bomber called Dulmatin, was dead.

Long a fugitive in the Philippines, Dulmatin had returned to Indonesia in 2008 and eventually made contact with Bashir at his Islamic school near Solo. Though accompanied to Central Java by another jihadi, Dulmatin spoke to Bashir alone.

Dulmatin is alleged to have won Bashir's support for a training camp. In the aftermath of its discovery, the police shot and killed Dulmatin in March 2009.

Had Dulmatin been arrested, and not killed, he might well have proved an unco-operative detainee. But this case nonetheless underlines how crucial it is for terrorists to be kept alive wherever possible.

Only a few days ago, a brother-in-law of Dulmatin, Hari Kuncor, was reported to have been arrested quietly in Central Java. He is likewise a former Mindanao fugitive. Hari Kuncoro's future testimony on the links between Indonesian and Philippine jihadism will be valuable.

In detention, Bashir denied any contact with Dulmatin. He claimed the camp was aimed at providing military ''preparation'' for Muslims, not for terrorism. As is his habit, he described his arrest and trial as a ''plot'' ordered by the United States. In an interview he asserted Yudhoyono himself acknowledged the US as his ''second country''.

Interviewed just hours before hearing his verdict, Bashir said that both the US and Australia wanted him to disappear from Indonesia, if necessary to be killed.

Bashir has shown great staying-power. Co-founder with Abdullah Sungkar of an Islamic boarding school at Ngruki, Solo, in the 1970s, he succeeded Sungkar as Emir of Jemaah Islamiyah on the latter's death in 1999. He served two terms in prison after the Bali bombing, thereby acquiring the status of a martyr in his supporters' eyes. The occasional denunciations of Bashir by foreign leaders only served to consolidate his status as a victim of Western machinations.

Bashir is not an original thinker. One idea he promotes with some effect, however, is that the Indonesian government is ''thoghut'', that is impious and hence illegitimate, because it is not based on Islamic law. The implications of this doctrine are far-reaching. It surely means that no Indonesian government has ever been legitimate and presumably all laws can be ignored. Yet no administration has sought to confront this doctrine head-on.