Arrest of bombing suspects illegal: PBHI

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)