An Indonesian high court has cleared a radical Muslim preacher of treason but has upheld other charges.
A spokesman for the Jakarta court announced today that Abu Bakar Bashir's prison sentence, handed down in September, had been reduced to three years from four.
The decision is likely to draw criticism from security hardliners in the West as well as in neighbouring countries such as Singapore, who had attacked the original four-year sentence as too light.
A Jakarta lower court ruled in September that Bashir, accused of being the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiah militant network, at least knew the group existed and convicted him of treason and other charges.
But it said allegations Bashir led the militant Muslim group Jemaah Islamiah, blamed for actual and planned violence throughout the region, were unproven.
The appellate court, in a ruling announced today, overturned the treason conviction but upheld charges of forging documents and violating immigration laws, the spokesman said.
Australian Prime Minister Mr John Howard said shortly after the September verdict he still believed the cleric had led Jemaah Islamiah, which is widely seen as al-Qaeda's arm in Asia and as being behind the Bali bombings last year that killed 202 people, many of them Australians.