Aid Fitr Pardons

On Friday Morocco celebrated Aid Fitr and Morocco's King Mohammed VI used the occasion to grant pardons or reduced sentences to 1,111 inmates, condemned to various lengths of time in prison.

Pardons were granted to 280 prisoners, while another 696 others saw their prison sentence reduced. Five inmates serving life prison terms had their sentence cut down to a determined prison term. The other detainees have benefited of various measures reducing their sentences or annulling the payment of their fines.

In other parts of the world not every prisoner was as lucky The jailed Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, will not benefit from a reduction in his sentence to mark the Muslim holiday On major holidays, Indonesia normally reduces the sentences of prisoners who have shown good behaviour. Ba'asyir, who is serving 30 months for his involvement in a criminal conspiracy that led to the the 2002 Bali bombings, has benefited from such remissions in the past.

However, Australia protested strongly about the sentence cuts for the Muslim cleric, and had warned Jakarta not to make another reduction to mark Aid Fitr. Eighty-eight of the more than 200 people to die in the 2002 nightclub attacks on Bali were Australian. Ba'asyir has condemned what he says is interference by the Australian regime in Indonesian laws.

The 67-year-old cleric was sentenced in March 2005 for his role in the Bali bombings and then on August 17, 2005 his sentence was cut by more than four months to mark Independence Day.

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