Jakarta, Indonesia ? Facing heavy police security, hundreds of Muslim militants rallied early today outside a courthouse in Jakarta, where judges were set to announce a verdict in the trial of the alleged spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network.

Prosecutors say a guilty decision against Abu Bakar Bashir on treason and bombing charges would be the strongest blow yet to al-Qaida-linked militants, blamed for a string of atrocities in Indonesia and the Philippines and which planned attacks against Western targets.

“I came here to support Bashir and to demand that he be freed because this trial was forced on us by the enemy of God, the terrorist government of the United States,” said Abdullah Abdurahim, one of about 400 supporters of the jailed cleric who had arrived in the capital overnight.

Several hundred policemen, some armed with automatic rifles, stood guard outside the building. Four water-cannon trucks were parked nearby.

The court was set to get under way later in the morning, but it wasn’t clear when the verdict would be handed down.

Bashir, who ran a religious boarding school in Central Java, was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 12 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. He has not been charged with involvement in that attack or the Aug. 5 bombing of Jakarta’s Marriott Hotel in which 12 people were killed.

However, Indonesian prosecutors say that under his leadership, Jemaah Islamiyah plotted to kill President Megawati Sukarnoputri with the wider aim of establishing an Islamic state in Indonesia.

He also has been charged in a series of church blasts throughout Indonesia on Christmas Eve 2000, killing 19.

Prosecutors say those attacks were designed to destabilize the country of 210 million people, mostly Muslims, with the aim of overthrowing its secular republican government and setting up a fundamentalist state.

Supporters of radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir shout Allahuakbar (God is great) outside a court where he attends his trial in Jakarta, Indonesia. Hundreds of Muslim militants rallied early today outside the courthouse where judges were set to announce a verdict in the trial of the alleged spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network.

The trial was politically sensitive for Megawati, whose coalition government depends on the support of moderate Muslim parties.

Representatives of these parties, including her own vice president, Hamzah Haz, have expressed support for Bashir.

Analysts say that in contrast to the dozens of obscure radicals who carried out the attack in Bali — where a special tribunal has already delivered its first death sentence — Bashir remains influential in religious circles in the world’s largest Muslim country.