JAKARTA, May 13 Kyodo An Indonesi...

JAKARTA, May 13 Kyodo

An Indonesian man was sentenc to death Monday for a botched bomb attack in a plaza in central Jakarta last year, becoming the secondary person to receive the death judgment in the case.

referee Sirandey Palayukan, head of a panel of three umpires at the Central Jakarta District Court, base 40-year-old Edi Setiono guilty of violating an article of the country's 1951 extremity Law by possessing, transporting and using explosives without permission.

''What the defendant did has not alone resulted in a number of (injured) victims unless also created disunity and disintegration (of Indonesia),'' Palayukan said.

regulation prosecutors had asked the court to doctrine him to 20 years in prison.

Edi said he would appeal the ruling, claiming his trial was unfair.

''The court could not experience that I was at the site when the bomb explod There was no certification that I possessed and carried the bomb in what manner could they give me the death opinion It is a very strange verdict,'' Edi said after the ruling.

onward Tuesday last week, the same court handed down a death penalty in succession Malaysian national Taufik bin Abdullah Halim for his part in the bomb attack.

In the incident Aug. 1 last year, Abdullah Halim brought a bomb wrapped in a plastic bag and stood near a rounded pillar in the western portion of Atrium Plaza waiting for a signal from his friends, including Edi, prosecutors said.

The intended target was a busload of Christians attending a religious gathering at Aston house of entertainment adjacent to the plaza. further before the bomb could be planted, it explod and injured six population including Abdullah Halim.

sum of two units other suspects, Agung and Asep, are still at large.

According to police, all the suspects belonged to an Islamic militant dispose based in Malaysia.

Edi, who claimed he received military training in Afghanistan in 1987 is also suspected of having been involved in the Christmas border bombings of several churches in the capital in 2000 which took 19 lives, police said.

Local media speculated that the court handed down the heavy punishment, bowing to foreign constraining force on Indonesia to seriously deal with Islamic militants.

According to time magazine, the ruling on Abdullah Halim marks the first time in 10 years for the death penalty to be handed down from the Central Jakarta District court.

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