Rizieq Shihab, an alleged Indonesian Islamic preacher, was released on parole on Wednesday, barely over a year after being imprisoned and sooner than expected, according to a government official.
In June of last year, the hardline imam and spiritual figurehead of the now-outlawed Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) was sentenced to four years in prison for breaking Indonesia’s quarantine law and circulating false information during the outbreak.
Rizieq was found guilty of violating coronavirus limits when he held and attended many mass events, including his daughter’s wedding, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rika Aprianti, a prisons department spokeswoman, said in a written statement on Wednesday that Rizieq had been jailed since December 2020 and was thus eligible for release.
He was released because he had met the ‘administrative and substantive prerequisites to earn remission,’ she explained.
Rizieq has been a divisive political figure in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country.
The fiery preacher was at the centre of enormous protests in 2016 to depose a Christian governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, raising concerns about the Islamization of Indonesia’s generally secular and multicultural polity.
Faced with charges of obscenity and insulting state ideology, Rizieq escaped to Saudi Arabia in 2017 and went into self-imposed exile. His supporters argued that the charges were politically motivated, and they were later withdrawn when he returned to Indonesia in 2020.
Rizieq’s group, the FPI, was outlawed in 2020 after the state said it threatened the nation’s philosophy, yet some Islamic conservatives still find him to be popular.
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