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The father-in-law of slain Malaysian terror leader Noordin Mohammed Top went on trial in Indonesia on Thursday, facing up to 15 years in prison for helping the fugitive evade capture.

Baharudin Latif alias Baridin, 55, was arrested five months after suicide bomb attacks on two luxury hotels in Jakarta in July last year that killed seven people.

“The defendant deliberately provided assistance and facilities to the perpertrator of terrorism, by hiding from police the most-wanted terror mastermind Noordin Mohammed Top,” prosecutor Firmansyah told the court.

Noordin was killed in a police raid in September, ending one of Southeast Asia’s biggest manhunts.

He led a group he called "Al-Qaeda in the Malay Archipelago" and was responsible for multiple deadly attacks in the mainly Muslim country, including the hotel bombings and a truck-bomb blast at the Australian embassy in 2004.

Firmansyah said Latif had been a member of regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah, or JI, since 1995 and led a local branch in East Java province in 2000.

“The defendant was introduced to Noordin Mohammed Top in 2005 when he picked him up in Pemalang town of Central Java and harboured him in his home in Cilacap of Central Java,” he said.

Noordin visited Latif’s house three times and married his daughter, Arina Rahmah, in 2006.

“After the marriage, Noordin lived in Baridin’s house,” Firmansyah said. According to the International Crisis Group think-tank, Noordin married Rahmah in 2006 and the couple had two children.

Rahmah was also arrested but denied knowing the true identity of her husband.

The 2009 hotel attacks were the first against Western targets in Indonesia since 2005 when Noordin’s JI splinter group allegedly bombed tourist restaurants on the resort island of Bali, killing 20 people.


Agence France-Presse