Jemaah Islamiyah was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings, in which more than 200 people were killed. (AP pic)
SURAKARTA: Indonesia’s national counter-terrorism agency plans to recommend reducing prison sentences for jailed former Jemaah Islamiyah members who support the group’s dissolution to encourage more of them to surrender.
Eddy Hartono, the agency’s chief, said it plans to suggest to the relevant ministries that prison sentences for more than 180 former members be cut, the Straits Times reported.
Hartono announced the proposal yesterday in the city of Surakarta, central Java, without providing a timeline.
Jemaah Islamiyah was formed in the early 1990s and was affiliated with Islamist rebel organisation Al-Qaeda.
It is responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings, in which more than 200 people were killed.
The group, which had planned to establish a conservative Islamic state in Southeast Asia, had a presence in Singapore since the late 1980s and plotted to bomb multiple targets in the city-state in 2001.
In late June, former leader Abu Rusdan said in a video that Jemaah Islamiyah’s senior council and a Islamic boarding school affiliated to it had agreed to dissolve the group and “return to Indonesia’s embrace”, Straits Times reported.
