Jail sheikh

摘要

A MAN ABDURRAHMAN was first arrested in 2004 following an accidental explosion during a bomb-making class near Jakarta. But his career as a jihadist really got going in prison, where he has spent 12 of the subsequent 14 years. Until recently Mr Aman was able to run a militant propaganda campaign from his cell. He translated some 115 articles from Islamic State publications into Indonesian and uploaded them online. He also recruited volunteers to go fight in Syria-all from behind bars. He became IS's "most important ideological promoter" in Indonesia, according to Sidney Jones of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), a think-tank in Jakarta. Abu Bakar Basyir (pictured), a radical cleric on death row for masterminding bombings in Bali in 2002 that killed more than 200 people, first befriended Mr Aman in prison and then distanced himself from him because he was "too hardline".