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The US government’s decision last week to brand the hard-line group Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid a terrorist organization is ridiculous, says Abu Bakar Bashir, the group’s founder and a convicted terrorist himself.

The United States announced on Thursday that it was placing sanctions on three leading members of JAT and banning US citizens and businesses from engaging in transactions with them.

In a statement ready out by his assistant Hasyim Abdullah on Sunday, Bashir said: “JAT is a religious organization, and the three JAT officials who the US slapped financial sanctions on don’t even have any assets.

“They don’t have any assets here, much less in the United States, so they have nothing to do with America.

“This designation is both ridiculous and stupid,” the statement added.

The US State Department said JAT was behind a church bombing in Central Java in September, as well as deadly attacks on police officers and bank robberies to raise money for weapons and bomb-making materials.

“JAT seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in Indonesia, and has carried out numerous attacks on Indonesian government personnel and civilians in order to achieve this goal,” it said in a statement.

The US Treasury announced the ban on conducting transactions with the three JAT leaders, who include JAT’s acting leader, Mochammad Achwan, spokesman Son Hadi bin Muhadjir and Abdul Rosyid Ridho Ba’asyir, a recruiter and fund-raiser.

The United States “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,” said Adam Szubin, director of the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Achwan is thought to have been instrumental in recruiting followers for JAT. In 2010, he set up the militant group Laskar 99 in Poso, Central Sulawesi.

Son Hadi was previously a member of the Southeast Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah, of which Bashir was widely believed to be the spiritual leader. The group, with links to Al Qaeda, was responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people and a spate of other terrorist attacks in Indonesia and the southern Philippines.

Son Hadi served four years in prison for sheltering Noordin M. Top, one of the highest-profile JI terrorists and a key player in the Bali bombings.

Abdul Rosyid is believed to use his Islamic boarding school in Magetan, East Java, to recruit members and raise funds for JAT.

In response to the terrorist designation against JAT, Son Hadi said last Friday that the move smacked of paranoia, describing the accusations as wild and lacking substance.

He added that he suspected the timing of the announcement was meant to undermine Bashir’s appeal with the Supreme Court against his terrorism conviction.

Bashir is currently serving nine years in prison for funding terrorist activities. The police have chosen not to act on the new designation, saying JAT can “carry on in Indonesia as long as it is not breaking the law.”