The trial of another suspected rebel leader began in Jakarta only days after hard-line cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Abu Tholut and his lawyers were in court to hear the charges read out by a judge in which Tholut, 50, is accused of helping the same jihadist training camp as Bashir, the Jakarta Globe reported.

Police raided the camp in the mountainous area of Jantho, Aceh in February 2010. They said it was used to train would-be terrorists to attack foreigners and moderate Muslim leaders in Indonesia, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Tholut -- also known as Mostofa, Pranata Yuda and Imron Baehaqi -- is accused of supplying the camp with weapons including M16 rifles and training people in the use of arms.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Tholut who was arrested in December in a police crackdown on more than 120 suspected members of the Tanzim al-Qaida group that is believed to have operated the camp.

Tholut and Bashir are thought to have connections to another proscribed terrorist organization, Jemaah Islamiah.

Tholut has a previous eight-year prison sentence following a conviction for involvement in a terrorist group that orchestrated a 2001 bomb blast in a central Jakarta shopping plaza that wounded six people. But after serving five years he was released in 2007 on good behavior.

As Tholut began his trail process, lawyers for Bashir said they would appeal the 15-year sentence. Bashir, who like Tholut, has previous convictions, was found guilty of helping finance the camp.

Bashir, 72, consistently has denied the allegations, saying he has been hounded by U.S. security officials colluding with Indonesian police.

He spent more than two years in jail for helping to inspire the bombers who killed more than 200 people in Bali but he was acquitted on appeal.

The sentencing of Bashir and the trial of Tholut are the latest -- although most important -- results for the police in their fight against terrorism. Around 50 other people have been sentenced on less serious charges for being involved in the Aceh training camp.

The remote province of Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, has a population of around 4.5 million and continues to occupy the attention of national police. Aceh also is economically important to the archipelago nation because it has substantial natural resources, including oil and natural gas.

Police intensified their hunt for terrorists after the Bali bombings in October 2002, the deadliest act of terrorism in the history of Indonesia. More than 150 of the 202 dead were foreigners, including 88 Australians. Around 240 people were injured.

Police long have suspected Bashir of involvement in the Bali bombings.

In 2008 Bashir claimed that the first bomb set off in Bali was very small.

"At most it shattered glass and didn't wound people, or at most wounded them a little," he said. The main explosion was what he called "a micro-nuclear bomb, not a regular bomb ... The bomb was made by the CIA. It could be no one else."

While police have been successful in getting convictions on terrorist charges, making the convictions stick has been a problem and Bashir is a case in point.

He has been in and out of jail and in 2003 was sentenced to three years in prison on treason and immigration charges related to the so-called Christmas Eve bombings in 2000. The series of coordinated bombings of churches and Christian houses in Jakarta and eight other cities killed 18 people and injured dozens more.

But his sentence was reduced to 18 months and he was released from prison in 2004. On the day of his release, police rearrested him for alleged involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings.

In 2005, Bashir was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison but he was cleared of those charges on appeal and released in June after 26 months in prison.

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