Terrorist suspect withdraws confessions<\/p>\n
Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali<\/p>\n
The trial of Ali Gufron, alias Muklas, took a dramatic turn on
\nMonday, when the defendant revoked all his previous confessions
\nmade to police investigators, claiming that he had been subjected
\nto severe mental and physical torture during his interrogation.<\/p>\n
"The torture was very brutal, uncivilized and inhumanly
\nsavage," Muklas screamed angrily before stunned judges.<\/p>\n
Muklas alleged that through torture, police officers had
\nforced him to confess that Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, a hardline Muslim
\ncleric currently being tried in Jakarta on charges of treason,
\nwas the person who ordered, financed and gave his blessings to
\nthe Bali bombings.<\/p>\n
He also said that police investigators had also forced him to
\nsay that Ba'asyir had asked him to plan an assassination attempt
\nagainst President Megawati Soekarnoputri when she was vice
\npresident.<\/p>\n
"All that information is false. Therefore, I retract all the
\ninformation in my BAP (police interrogation file)," Muklas said.<\/p>\n
Reading out his four-page defense, richly illustrated with
\nspiritual quotations from the Koran, Muklas said that the torture
\nstarted right after his arrest on Dec. 3, during the initial
\ninterrogation sessions in Central Java.<\/p>\n
He said the darkest hours took place after he had spent about
\na month under custody of the Bali police. One night at around
\n9:00 p.m., Muklas claimed, a group of about 10 plainclothes
\nofficers took him out of his detention cell and took him to an
\nunknown venue. There, they stripped him naked, made him lay down
\non the floor and repeatedly stomped on his body.<\/p>\n
Raising his clenched fist high in the air, Muklas, apparently
\nunable to control his emotion, recalled that moment in a
\nhorrified voice.<\/p>\n
"In the name of Allah, I would rather be shot in the head
\nseveral times than being stripped naked. As a Muslim who knows
\nwhat dignity is and follows aurat, it was the most humiliating
\ntorture for me," he said in disgust.<\/p>\n
Aurat is an Islamic law that decrees that certain parts of the
\nbody must be kept covered and hidden from the view of people
\noutside of one's immediate family.<\/p>\n
"During my entire life, only my wife and children have seen my
\nbare thighs," he added.<\/p>\n
He also alleged that the officers took pictures of his
\ngenitals. They ended the ordeal by taking Muklas into the
\nbathroom and pouring near-boiling water over his head.<\/p>\n
Muklas claimed that the physical pain of the torture lasted
\nalmost three weeks. To prevent his brothers Amrozi and Ali Imron
\nfrom undergoing a similar ordeal, Muklas told them to follow the
\ninvestigators' scenario.<\/p>\n
"That's why their BAP might also contain false information,"
\nhe said.<\/p>\n
Amrozi and Alim Imron are also suspects in the deadly Bali
\nbombing that killed over 200 people and injured some 350 others.<\/p>\n
The police have arrested over 30 people as suspects in the
\nterrorist attack, believed to be the biggest after the terrorist
\nattacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in
\nSeptember 2001.<\/p>\n
Although he claimed that he remembered the names and faces of
\nthe torturers, Muklas refused to identify them. However, he
\nstressed that none of the Bali police investigators, whom he
\npraised as friendly and professional, were involved in the
\ntorture.<\/p>\n
The trial is to resume on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the morning, the presiding judges in Imam Samudra's
\ntrial examined eight witnesses, including Muslim leader Haji Agus
\nBambang Prayitno.<\/p>\n
Separately, the trials of 12 other defendants known as the
\nSolo Group and the Serang Group were held at five different
\nlocations in the Denpasar Public Court compound.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/terrorist-suspect-withdraws-confessions-1447893297",
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