T

he United States officially announced the listing of Indonesia-based Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT) as a terrorist organization on Thursday, a move condemned by the hard-line group as a bid to influence the legal appeal launched by jailed cleric and the organization’s chief patron, Abu Bakar Ba’asyir.

In a statement on its website, the US State Department said that it designated JAT as a foreign terrorist organization because the group was “responsible for multiple coordinated attacks against innocent civilians, police and military personnel in Indonesia”.

“JAT has robbed banks and carried out other illicit activities to fund the purchase of assault weapons, pistols and bomb-making materials,” the statement said.

Last September, a JAT suicide bomber detonated explosives in a Surakarta church, Central Java. Police later uncovered additional plans for suicide bombings to be carried out by members of the group across the archipelago, the statement said.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has also blacklisted three Indonesian citizens associated with JAT: the group’s acting leader Mochammad Achwan, spokesman Son Hadi bin Muhadjir and leadership figure Abdul Rosyid Ridho Ba’asyir, who is one of Ba’asyir’s sons.

Any property or assets owned in the US by either of the three will consequently be frozen and US citizens and corporations will be prohibited from engaging in financial transactions with them.

“By designating the leaders of JAT, OFAC is taking another step to ensure that terrorists are cut off from the international financial system and find it ever more difficult to carry out their acts of violence, no matter where they are based,” OFAC director Adam Szubin said in a Treasury Department statement.

Achwan, who was appointed as JAT’s acting leader immediately after Ba’asyir’s arrest in 2010, said he was surprised by the designations, but considered the accusations to be “ridiculous”.

“Since it was established in 2008, JAT has been very open about its organizational platforms and activities. If the US government consider us a terrorist organization, then we will wait for them to come up with any supporting evidence to prove it,” Achwan told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

“It is clear that we can’t take any responsibility over an individual’s initiative to commit a violent act, even if he or she identifies himself or herself as a JAT member.”

Achwan said the designations may have been made to tarnish Ba’asyir before the Supreme Court wraps up deliberations over the jailed cleric’s appeal against a lower court’s verdict in a terrorism-related case.

“The US and its Western allies always need to have some ‘bad guys’, like Ustadz [cleric] Ba’asyir, to continue to discredit Islam,” he said.

Last June, the South Jakarta District Court sentenced Ba’asyir to 15 years in prison for organizing a militant training camp in Aceh. His lawyers then appealed the verdict to a higher court, which later cut his sentence to nine years the following month.

Last November, his lawyers filed another appeal in the Supreme Court and are currently awaiting the verdict.

National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chief Insp. Gen. (ret) Ansyaad Mbai said it was only “a matter of time” before the terrorist designation was made.

“The fact that JAT and its activists are still campaigning to replace our democracy with their idea of an Islamic state and because they tend to authorize the use of violence in pursuing their agenda must be among the reasons why the US government put them on the list,” he said.

Ansyaad said that BNPT was still closely monitoring JAT activities.

JAT was founded by Ba’asyir in 2008, following a break from his old organization, the Indonesian Mujahideen Council (MMI).

Lawmaker Tubagus Hasanuddin, the deputy chairman of the House of Representatives’ defense commission, urged the US government to present supporting evidence before accusing JAT of committing terrorist acts.

“Once they have the evidence, they can present it to the National Police and both can initiate a joint investigation of [JAT],” he said.

Dicky Christanto contributed to this report