Captain jailed over murder of Marsinah

JAKARTA (JP): An Army captain was sentenced to nine-months imprisonment by a military tribunal in Surabaya, East Java, yesterday, for failing to report to his superiors about the impending murder of labor activist Marsinah last year.

The conviction against Captain Kusaeri, formerly chief of the Porong military in Sidoarjo, has seemed to have brought the trials of the highly controversial murder case to a conclusion.

Col. Baroeno, presiding judge in the tribunal, found 49-year old Kusaeri guilty of negligence and said that he should have detected that a murder plan was underway and reported it to his superiors, according to the Antara news agency.

According to court testimony, Kusaeri came into contact with the people who carried out the murder and the circumstances at the time clearly indicated that he should have known that the plan was afoot.

The Army captain in his defense at an earlier hearing insisted that he had no prior knowledge of the murder.

Marsinah's badly mutilated body was found on May 9 in Nganjuk only a few days after she led a workers' strike at PT. Citra Putra Surya, the watchmaking company she worked for.

Nine civilians, including the company's director, have been convicted for the murder. All are insisting on their innocence and are appealing their convictions. (emb)