•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

Jakarta.  A woman who was with alleged terrorist mastermind Noordin M. Top and two other militants when they were killed in her home was found guilty on Thursday of sheltering the terrorists after last year’s twin hotel bombings in Jakarta.

Putri Munawaroh, 20, was sentenced to three years in prison at a hearing at the South Jakarta Court packed with her noisy supporters.

Putri, who was pregnant at the time of the bombings and has since given birth, remained silent after hearing the verdict.

But her supporters shouted insults to the panel of judges presiding over the case.

“Allahu Akbar [God Is Great!] May you be condemned!” a man screamed while pointing his finger at presiding judge Ida Bagus Dwiyantara.

Ida said Putri was convincingly shown to have concealed information about the terrorists and that her actions undermined the government. The sentence, however, was five years less than the prosecution had demanded.

“The defendant is still very young and has never been convicted of any crime before, and she has a child to take care of,” Ida said in explaining the sentence.

Lawyer Achmad Michdan, representing Putri, said he would appeal because the panel had delivered the verdict based on weak assumptions.

“My client was found guilty of concealing information about Noordin and the other men only because she always locked the doors and the windows when leaving her home to prevent neighbors from knowing their whereabouts,” he said.

“But there was nothing in all the hearings that proved Putri had known her guests before they stayed at her home. That’s the key question that cannot not be answered.”

Putri is the sole female charged in the deadly July 17, 2009 attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels blamed on the group led by Noordin.

She was the only survivor of the police raid on her rented house in Solo two months later that killed Noordin, two other militants and her husband, Adib Susilo.

She maintained during the trial that she had no idea who the three men were, saying she dutifully accepted them as her husband’s guests.

She said in her defense in an earlier hearing that the three had arrived when she was not at home, and her husband had told her they were friends of a local ustadz (Islamic teacher) and would leave after settling their business.

“As a wife, I didn’t ask more questions, because in my religion the husband’s guests are not my business,” she said.

Dozens of supporters, many of them familiar faces from the trial of another defendant, Muhammad Jibriel, packed the courtroom and interrupted the proceedings from start to finish.

When the panel of judges entered the room, Putri’s backers refused to follow courtroom protocol by standing up. “The judges are only human. No need to respect them,” a woman in a black robe shouted.

As the verdict was read, several people in the room stood up and displayed a poster that read: “Free Putri Munawaroh and her baby from the vicious acts of Densus and its Allies,” referring to the police’s anti-terror squad, Special Detachment 88.

They coughed loudly, chatted with each other and talked on their phones, disregarding the norms of courtroom behavior.

The demonstrators were not seen during Putri’s previous trial sessions, but had been regular visitors at the hearings of Jibriel, who has been sentenced to five years on a similar charge.