Detention center 'responsible for inmate's death'

JAKARTA (JP): A lawyer said yesterday the Pondok Bambu detention center in East Jakarta was responsible for the death of his client and said the jail's conditions needed to be improved.

OC Kaligis representing a family in jail for murdering a woman and her three children, said one of his clients, Lambertus Lele Koban, died in the detention center because of poor conditions.

"The rights of the detainees to have health care should have been respected by the guards," Kaligis said.

Kaligis said he found Lambertus had been neglected for at least two days since getting sick on Nov. 23. He was brought to the nearby Police Hospital at Kramat Jati on the evening of Nov. 25.

The Bekasi District Court had found Lambertus guilty of helping his uncle Philipus Kia Ledjah murder Eli Kusnaeli and her three children last year.

The Jakarta High Court sentenced him to 10 years jail last July. Lambertus' lawyers, led by Kaligis, were in the process of appealing against the sentence in the Supreme Court.

"My clients' legal process is not even final yet," Kaligis said after visiting the Pondok Bambu detention center yesterday.

An autopsy showed Lambertus died of a respiratory illness. His relatives believed the detention center's poor conditions caused the illness and plan to file a lawsuit against the authorities.

Kaligis said the detention center did not have qualified doctors and only gave medical check-ups occasionally.

There is one doctor and one dentist for over 300 hundred detainees.

His aunt, Suparmi, who was sentenced to 20 years for the murder, said the detention center's health booth only had analgesics like Antalgin.

Suparmi said she had to repeatedly asked the detention center's guards before they took Lambertus to hospital.

"But, everything was late," the woman said sobbing.

Philipus's son Albertus, 16, and his neighbor Clemence, 15, who were sentenced to 10 years jail, said they were placed in a closed room with insufficient ventilation and sunlight.

Clemence, who looked weak, said he often got headaches during his detention.

The two boys said they had been removed from their original cells because they were repaired last month.

"We can still read and play in the small room," Albertus said.

He said the 12-square-meter room housed 11 boys.

"A priest gave us just a thin foamed mat," he said.

Entis Martini, the head of the Pondok Bambu detention center's children's unit, told the team of lawyers the three boys always behaved well during their detention. (07)