Lenient sentence for those who beheaded three Christian girls
3/31/2007

Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Central Jakarta District Court Wednesday sentenced a Muslim militant to 20 years in prison for masterminding the gruesome murder of three Christian schoolgirls in the Central Sulawesi's town of Poso in 2005. The two men who killed the three girls and beheaded them were sentenced instead to 14 years in prison. Given the fact that all three Islamists could have received the death sentence the court’s decision is very lenient. The Indonesian press noted that the sentences corresponded to the demands of the prosecution.

Hasanuddin, who is linked to the terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah, was found guilty of organising the crime, buying the machetes used in the beheading, and writing the notes left near the bodies threatening additional murders.

According to the prosecutor Payaman SH, Hasanuddin had asked his men to get “at least a hundred Christian heads in Poso” as compensation for the Muslims who died in the violent sectarian clashes that had occurred between 1999 and 2001 in Poso itself. Clashes between Muslims and Christians had left more than a thousand dead and driven even more out of their homes. What triggered the violence has not been fully elucidated. the rest