Indonesia jails 7 men for supporting ISIS

JAKARTA, Indonesia – An Indonesian court Tuesday, February 9, sentenced 7 men to between 3 and 5 years in jail for supporting the Islamic State (ISIS) group, weeks after the extremist network launched a deadly assault on Jakarta.

Court officials said 4 of the men on trial had travelled to Syria to undertake military training with ISIS, while the 3 other culprits helped purchase tickets and recruited people to join the group. 

“Indonesians who departed for Syria and supported ISIS should be considered to have conducted terrorism acts,” Mochammad Arifin, a presiding judge over several of the cases, said. 

Tuah Febriwansyah, who received a 5-year sentence on Tuesday, told the court that he had known one of the culprits in last month’s attacks that killed 4 civilians and 4 assailants.

Hundreds of Indonesians are feared to have travelled to the Middle East to join ISIS, which controls vast swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. Several have been detained on their return.  

Counter-terror officials, however, complain that current laws are still too weak in the Muslim-majority country to prevent extremists from travelling to Syria and to block the spread of radical information on the Internet. – Rappler.com