Jakarta, Indonesia - An Indonesian court dismissed on Wednesday a blasphemy case against an editor who published controversial cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad last year, saying the prosecution used a wrong legal article.
Prosecutors indicted Teguh Santosa, chief editor of the online version of the mass-market Rakyat Merdeka newspaper, in late August for insulting Islam as a religion through those publications.
However, the South Jakarta court in the trial's fourth session decided the case should not move ahead into cross-examination of witnesses.
"The court accepts the objections from the defendant on the article that was used by the prosecutor because it did not match the actions made by the defendant," said presiding judge Wahyono.
"What the defendant did was not based on disrespect. The pictures only appeared as background to the news," he said.
Under Indonesian law, the court can throw out a case before it goes to any substantive argumentation if it considers the indictment was falsely made.
The prosecution can appeal to a higher court if this rare outcome occurs. In this case, the prosecutor said he needed to think it over.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, is officially secular, but has laws banning religious insults.
The caricatures first appeared last September in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten. Rakyat Merdeka published them on its Web site the next month without sparking much protest.
However, eventually the cartoons triggered violent protests by Muslims worldwide, including in Jakarta.
More than 85 percent of Indonesia's 220 million people follow Islam. Most Indonesian Muslims are moderate, but militancy and public concern over Islamic issues have grown in recent years.