Damanik sentenced to three years

Damanik sentenced to three years

The district court in Palu, Central Sulawesi, sentenced a church
minister to three years in prison for the illegal possession of
arms and ammunition.

A panel of judges presided over by I Nyoman Somanada said Rev.
Rinaldy Damanik who was charged with violating Article 55 of Law
No. 12/1951 on the state of emergency, was found guilty of
possessing seven unregistered rifles, four guns and 144 rounds of
ammunition when he was helping to evacuate people terrorized in
Marowali, near the restive Poso area on Aug. 17, 2002.

"I am disappointed, the court's verdict is not fair,"
Damanik's wife Atika said after the trial on Monday.

Damanik's lawyer Johnson Panjaitan said he would ask his
client to appeal because the court verdict was groundless and the
judges did not consider all the legal evidence in the field to
make the verdict.

Law expert J.E. Sahetapy who gave testimony in court, said
that Damanik's arrest was "engineered" by the police and
government prosecutors to make a scapegoat out of him for a
series of post-conflict violent incidents.

Damanik, one of the Christian leaders who helped shape and was
a co-signer of the Malino peace agreement on Dec. 21, 2001, was
reportedly given poisoned food at the police detention house in
Palu.

More than 2,000 people were killed and thousands of others
were forcibly displaced when Poso erupted in fierce Christian-
Muslim conflict in 1999. It has since been declared safe. -- JP