Al Qaeda head choppers found guilty in Indonesia

AP/Houston Chronicle:

Three Islamic militants were found guilty today of decapitating three Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia and dumping their bloodied heads in nearby villages, judges said. They were sentenced to between 14 and 20 years.

The alleged members of the al Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network left a handwritten note close to the bodies, vowing more killings to avenge the deaths of Muslims in earlier sectarian violence on Sulawesi island.

"Wanted — 100 more heads," said Judge Lilik Mulyadi, reciting the letter's text. "Blood must be paid with blood, lives with lives, heads with heads."

Hasanuddin, 34, who goes by a single name, was sentenced to 20 years for masterminding the 2005 attack, and co-conspirators Lilik Purnomo, 28, and Irwanto Irano, 29, each got 14 years, he said.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has been hit by a string of terrorist attacks in recent years targeting local Christians and nightclubs, restaurants and foreign embassies.

But the grisly nature of the beheadings, which occurred as the children were cutting through a cocoa plantation on their way to school, gave fresh impetus to the country's war on terrorism and was followed by scores of arrests.

The three militants had faced a maximum penalty of death by firing squad, but judges ruled that they deserved some leniency for cooperating with authorities, confessing and showing remorse.

Siregar told the Central Jakarta District Court that Hasanuddin ordered the slayings and helped dumped their girls' heads in three Christian-dominated villages. Purnomo and Irano were found guilty of "ambushing and beheading" the teens, he said.

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Besides showing the depravity of the enemy the case also demonstrates their victimhood ideology. This victimhood aspect of al Qaeda's is a driving force in their terror agenda. They use video and other media to perpetrate the feeling of victimhood and the need for "revenge." The perverse lack of logic in killing innocents is reflected in their belief that their "victims" were "innocent."

Indonesia originally sought the death penalty against an Australian beautician who was caught with 4.1 kilos of pot. Here is a story from The Age in November of 2004. Jeralyn E. Merritt reports that the final sentence was "20 years in a hellhole of a Bali prison following her conviction for smuggling four kilos of pot into Bali. (Full coverage here.)" She reported at the first of the year that, "Meanwhile, Bali has released the wife of a terrorist mastermind who hid him after serving nine months."

It would appear that even with "lenient" treatment Schapelle Corby got the maximum sentence given to a head chopper.