Army captain faces 18 months in prison

JAKARTA (JP): Military prosecutors are demanding that an Army captain be imprisoned for 18 months for failing to report a plot to kill a labor activist last year.

Captain Kusaeri, formerly chief of Porong Military Command, is being tried in the military tribunal in Surabaya in connection with the murder of Marsinah, a worker at a watchmaking company, PT Citra Putra Surya, in Sidoarjo near Surabaya, in May last year.

Col. Srihadi Rahayu, who is prosecuting the case, said 49-year-old Kusaeri knowingly or inadvertently failed to report the murder plan to his superiors, both before and after it was carried out. The prosecution dropped earlier charges that Kusaeri was part of the plan.

The defendant is the only Army officer being tried in connection with the murder, which became an international issue last year when labor and human rights groups used it to showcase the plight of Indonesian workers before the international community.

Marsinah's badly mutilated body was found in an abandoned shack in a forest in Nganjuk on May 9, only a few days after she had led a workers' strike at the watchmaking company.

Nine people, including the company's director, his staff and security guards, have already been convicted in connection with the murder, thanks in part to Kusaeri's testimony.

The motive of the murder was never precisely determined in court. The prosecution said she was killed because she may have threatened the management saying she would go public with some confidential information that could threaten the company's business.

Retracted

Some of those convicted were summoned to testify in Kusaeri's marathon trial, but they all used the opportunity to retract the statements they gave to their military interrogators, saying the statements were extracted through torture.

Rahayu urged the tribunal to ignore the fact that they had retracted the statements, which incriminated themselves and Kusaeri. She pleaded with Judge Col. Baruno to base his decision on the written statement presented before the court rather than oral testimony before the tribunal.

According to the prosecution, Kusaeri caught a ride on May 5 on a van belonging to the company. Marsinah was present at the time. The defendant was also involved in a meeting of company staff members on the same day during which he apparently heard that they should "get rid" of Marsinah.

Kusaeri never denied that he was at the meeting, but insisted that he took the words "get rid" to mean to expel the woman from the company.

According to the prosecution, on May 11 Kusaeri approached the company directors saying pointedly "how could you have done such a thing to her?" Yet the defendant never reported anything about this to his superiors.

"His action has tainted the image of the Armed Forces," Rahayu said, adding however that Kusaeri had a distinct military career for 16 years, and received merit awards for the three times he served in East Timor and one for service in Irian Jaya. (emb)