THE venerable preacher named as a terrorist leader by the United States had a twinkle in his eye as he talked of his new mission to convert Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim nation, into what he calls an “Allahcracy”.

Abu Bakar Bashir is a free man after serving just over two years in jail for participating in the conspiracy to bomb two nightclubs in Bali in 2002. The suicide attacks killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians and 26 British citizens.

He was in fine form, sitting with his lawyer, Akhmad Michdan, and six followers round a table at Jakarta airport strewn with the debris of a copious, if sober, lunch consumed at the expense of the infidel press.

“Bali was a reaction,” said Bashir, who has learnt to measure his inflammatory words with care since our last interview at his Islamic boarding school, three weeks before the bombings on the holiday island.

“With regard to the bombings everywhere, these are reactions by Muslims to defend themselves. Muslims are being tortured everywhere from Afghanistan to the Philippines. So these reactions against America are global.”

Bashir, 68, was flying to Sumatra on the latest stage of a celebrity preaching tour that has hardly stopped since he was released from jail last month, to the fury of the American and Australian governments.

His followers murmured in indignant approval at the words of their ustad, or teacher, several of them typing busily on BlackBerrys or mobile phones as they did so. They chuckled when he joked that he had turned down a speaking invitation from a mosque in Australia “because I’m not 100% popular there”.

“George Bush is trying to rot Islam from within,” Bashir continued, sipping a milkshake, “and America is attacking Indonesian Muslims — with ideas. That’s why I’m fighting America — but only with preaching and ideas, of course.”

Depending on your viewpoint, Bashir is either a terrorist mastermind guilty of inciting suicidal young men to commit mass murder, or a devout teacher victimised for espousing the fundamental truths of Islam.

If the first assertion is true then the man sitting across the table has been responsible for approximately 249 deaths and hundreds of injuries in a wave of terrorist acts. These include the bombing of 24 Christian churches on Christmas Eve, 2000, the Bali bombs, a suicide car bomb strike on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003 and a failed suicide bomb attack on the Australian embassy in 2004.

Indonesian prosecutors acting on information from Asian and western intelligence agencies believed Bashir was the “emir”, or head, of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the regional affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

An official US government statement declared: “As JI’s top leader, Bashir has authorised terrorist operations and the use of JI’s operatives and resources for multiple terrorist attacks in southeast Asia.” It said he approved operations personally or through JI’s leadership council.

In practice, analysts have concluded, JI’s structure was almost indistinguishable from Bashir’s overt organisation, the Mujahidin Council of Indonesia, known as the MMI.

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