Arrest of bombing suspects illegal: PBHI<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights
\nAssociation (PBHI) on Wednesday claimed the police had unlawfully
\narrested the suspected bombers of the Jakarta Stock Exchange
\n(JSX) building.<\/p>\n
At a press briefing, the association also gave vent to
\nsuspicions concerning the police's arrest of the suspects, who
\nare also charged with being responsible for a grenade explosion
\nin the Malaysian Embassy compound here.<\/p>\n
PBHI executive director Hendardi said the arrest of the 22
\nsuspects at the Krung Motor Baru auto repair shop in Ciganjur,
\nSouth Jakarta, and their subsequent detention did not follow the
\nexisting legal procedures.<\/p>\n
\"Asnani (wife of the workshop owner Tengku Ismuhadi) has not
\nreceived a letter from the police saying that her husband has
\nbeen arrested,\" Hendardi said, adding that the police had also
\nfailed to show a warrant before searching the workshop.<\/p>\n
\"The police even took a caretaker from the workshop to their
\nheadquarters and tortured him,\" Hendardi said.<\/p>\n
Following the arrest of the first three suspects, the police
\nraided the auto repair shop, which is about 200 meters from the
\nprivate residence of President Abdurrahman Wahid, on Saturday,
\nduring the course of which the officers managed to arrest the 22
\nother suspects, including Ismuhadi.<\/p>\n
Ismuhadi's cousin, Tengku Munirwansyah, who witnessed the
\narrests described them as being conducted carelessly.<\/p>\n
\"I know that some of the men arrested were just ordinary
\ncustomers, who came to the shop to have their cars repaired,\"
\nsaid Munirwansyah, who also attended the media briefing at PBHI
\nheadquarters.<\/p>\n
He recalled that when he arrived at the workshop on the day in
\nquestion to check if his two taxis had been repaired, he
\nencountered seven men in civilian clothes carrying cellular
\nphones whom he first took to be customers.<\/p>\n
When Munirwansyah met one of the workshop employees, he was
\ntold that the seven men were police intelligence officers.<\/p>\n
\"They then just arrested whoever came into the workshop,\"
\nMunirwansyah said, adding that he was lucky not to have been
\npicked up.<\/p>\n
According to Hendardi, the public are currently puzzled by
\nsome inconsistencies in the police's statement on the arrest.<\/p>\n
\"It's strange that the suspects already admitted that they
\nwere the perpetrators of the bombing but did not reveal who the
\nmasterminds were,\" Hendardi said.<\/p>\n
The police, he explained, might lack the courage to reveal the
\npolitical motives behind the Sept. 13 bombing at the JSX building
\nwhich killed 11 people, injured dozens, and damaged some 200
\nvehicles.<\/p>\n
The first suspect to be arrested in connection with the
\nbombing was Iwan Setiawan alias Husen who, according to police,
\nwas arrested in a taxi at 4 a.m. on Saturday at a Cilandak
\ntraffic light in South Jakarta. He was allegedly found with two
\ngrenades in his possession which he intended to plant at the U.S.
\nembassy and the Sarinah department store.<\/p>\n
Iwan and two other suspects who were arrested later, confessed
\nto their involvement in the Aug. 27 grenade explosion in the
\nparking lot of the Malaysian Embassy in the Kuningan business
\ndistrict, according to the police's version of events.<\/p>\n
\"It's quite strange that a man who was involved in the JSX
\nbombing planned to blow up the U.S. embassy and the Sarinah
\ndepartment store using a taxi at 4 o'clock in the morning just a
\nday after the police started the Sapu Jaya Mandiri operation,\"
\nHendardi said.<\/p>\n
The Jakarta Police started the month-long operation a day
\nearlier to sweep for guns and explosive materials following a
\nseries of recent bombings in the capital.<\/p>\n
Hendardi also castigated the police for publicly announcing
\nthat most of the suspects were from Aceh which had led people to
\nthink that the JSX bombers were from the separatist Free Aceh
\nMovement (GAM).<\/p>\n
\"The people employed in the workshop are not only Acehnese.
\nThere were also some Sundanese and those from other ethnic groups
\nas well,\" Hendardi said.<\/p>\n
Separately, criminologist Andrianus Meliala said the
\ndiscrepancies in the police version were understandable.<\/p>\n
\"The officers' statements were not synchronized with each
\nother and this could mean that there is no plot involved here,\"
\nAndrianus told The Jakarta Post by phone.<\/p>\n
\"I know that the public have many questions, but I think we
\nwill just have to wait for the suspects to give their side of the
\nstory,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Andrianus stressed that it was the police who were under the
\ngreatest pressure to solve the case to show that they were
\ncommitted to upholding the law.<\/p>\n
\"Engineering the case means that they would be setting up a
\ntrap for themselves.\"<\/p>\n
Andrianus urged the police to put in a maximum effort to find
\nthe masterminds behind the bombing.<\/p>\n
\"There are two ways to do this. The first one is by using
\ndirty methods and torturing the suspects to name the masterminds
\nlike they used to do in the past.<\/p>\n
But I think they won't do that anymore because the public has
\nbecome more critical.\"<\/p>\n
\"So all they can do is to deploy most of their intelligence
\nofficers. But do they really have the resources, either in
\nquality and quantity, to do it?<\/p>\n
I doubt it,\" Andrianus said.(jaw)<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/arrest-of-bombing-suspects-illegal-pbhi-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }