Indonesian police have released 17 suspected members of a radical group campaigning for an Islamic state, two days after arresting them, because they cannot find any offence with which to charge them.
"We cannot charge them with planning to establish an Islamic state as the subversion law was revoked several years ago," Senior Commissioner Soenaryono, detective chief in West Java province, was quoted by Thursday's Jakarta Post as saying.
"We also cannot charge them with a violation of the criminal code as they did not commit any crime."
The detainees, arrested at a house in Bandung on Monday, said they had surrendered their Indonesian citizenship and taken an oath to become members of Negara Islam Indonesia (Indonesia Islamic State) Region-9, police said earlier this week.
They were said to have told police they were each required to recruit six to 10 new members.
The NII is under investigation by police and the country's highest Islamic authority as to whether it is linked to an Islamic boarding school in the West Java town of Indramayu.
Parents of students accuse the Al-Zaitun school of teaching a deviant form of Islam.
The Post said a parents' group called the Forum for Victims of NII was angry at the release of the 17. It alleged that children had been brainwashed.
Police said the parents failed to provide first-hand evidence of wrongdoing but investigation would continue.
NII followers say they are the new generation of a group called Darul Islam, whose leader Sekarmaji Marijan Kartosuwiryo proclaimed an "Indonesian Islamic State" in 1949.
Kartosuwiroyo was executed by the government of then-president Sukarno in 1962 after several bloody rebellions on Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi.
The NII says people who do not accept that Indonesia should be ruled by Islamic law are non-believers.
Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-populated nation but Islam is not the state religion and most people practise a moderate form.