Arrest of bombing suspects illegal: PBHI

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI) on Wednesday claimed the police had unlawfully arrested the suspected bombers of the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) building.

At a press briefing, the association also gave vent to suspicions concerning the police's arrest of the suspects, who are also charged with being responsible for a grenade explosion in the Malaysian Embassy compound here.

PBHI executive director Hendardi said the arrest of the 22 suspects at the Krung Motor Baru auto repair shop in Ciganjur, South Jakarta, and their subsequent detention did not follow the existing legal procedures.

"Asnani (wife of the workshop owner Tengku Ismuhadi) has not received a letter from the police saying that her husband has been arrested," Hendardi said, adding that the police had also failed to show a warrant before searching the workshop.

"The police even took a caretaker from the workshop to their headquarters and tortured him," Hendardi said.

Following the arrest of the first three suspects, the police raided the auto repair shop, which is about 200 meters from the private residence of President Abdurrahman Wahid, on Saturday, during the course of which the officers managed to arrest the 22 other suspects, including Ismuhadi.

Ismuhadi's cousin, Tengku Munirwansyah, who witnessed the arrests described them as being conducted carelessly.

"I know that some of the men arrested were just ordinary customers, who came to the shop to have their cars repaired," said Munirwansyah, who also attended the media briefing at PBHI headquarters.

He recalled that when he arrived at the workshop on the day in question to check if his two taxis had been repaired, he encountered seven men in civilian clothes carrying cellular phones whom he first took to be customers.

When Munirwansyah met one of the workshop employees, he was told that the seven men were police intelligence officers.

"They then just arrested whoever came into the workshop," Munirwansyah said, adding that he was lucky not to have been picked up.

According to Hendardi, the public are currently puzzled by some inconsistencies in the police's statement on the arrest.

"It's strange that the suspects already admitted that they were the perpetrators of the bombing but did not reveal who the masterminds were," Hendardi said.

The police, he explained, might lack the courage to reveal the political motives behind the Sept. 13 bombing at the JSX building which killed 11 people, injured dozens, and damaged some 200 vehicles.

The first suspect to be arrested in connection with the bombing was Iwan Setiawan alias Husen who, according to police, was arrested in a taxi at 4 a.m. on Saturday at a Cilandak traffic light in South Jakarta. He was allegedly found with two grenades in his possession which he intended to plant at the U.S. embassy and the Sarinah department store.

Iwan and two other suspects who were arrested later, confessed to their involvement in the Aug. 27 grenade explosion in the parking lot of the Malaysian Embassy in the Kuningan business district, according to the police's version of events.

"It's quite strange that a man who was involved in the JSX bombing planned to blow up the U.S. embassy and the Sarinah department store using a taxi at 4 o'clock in the morning just a day after the police started the Sapu Jaya Mandiri operation," Hendardi said.

The Jakarta Police started the month-long operation a day earlier to sweep for guns and explosive materials following a series of recent bombings in the capital.

Hendardi also castigated the police for publicly announcing that most of the suspects were from Aceh which had led people to think that the JSX bombers were from the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

"The people employed in the workshop are not only Acehnese. There were also some Sundanese and those from other ethnic groups as well," Hendardi said.

Separately, criminologist Andrianus Meliala said the discrepancies in the police version were understandable.

"The officers' statements were not synchronized with each other and this could mean that there is no plot involved here," Andrianus told The Jakarta Post by phone.

"I know that the public have many questions, but I think we will just have to wait for the suspects to give their side of the story," he said.

Andrianus stressed that it was the police who were under the greatest pressure to solve the case to show that they were committed to upholding the law.

"Engineering the case means that they would be setting up a trap for themselves."

Andrianus urged the police to put in a maximum effort to find the masterminds behind the bombing.

"There are two ways to do this. The first one is by using dirty methods and torturing the suspects to name the masterminds like they used to do in the past.

But I think they won't do that anymore because the public has become more critical."

"So all they can do is to deploy most of their intelligence officers. But do they really have the resources, either in quality and quantity, to do it?

I doubt it," Andrianus said.(jaw)