Dossiers of Tanjung Priok massacre submitted
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
As the Jakarta Human Rights Court set the date for the opening of ad hoc tribunal on the 1984 Tanjung Priok incident for Sept. 15, the court received on Monday dossiers of two military officers charged with involvement in the tragedy.
The defendants are Maj. Gen. (ret) Rudolf Adolf Butar-butar, 57, who was formerly chief of the North Jakarta Military Command, and Maj. Gen. (ret) Pranowo, 62, who was formerly chief of the Jakarta Military Police.
They are charged under Law No. 26/2000 on Human Rights Tribunal for atrocities against civilians. If convicted they face charges of a minimum sentence of five to 10 years imprisonment and could face the death sentence.
The court had yet to appoint the panel of judges to hear the cases.
The court earlier received a dossier for 12 other defendants, including Capt. Sutrisno Mascung, in the same case.
The court will open the hearing on Sutrisno along with 11 former members of the Arhanudse-06 Battalion deployed on Sept. 12, 1984 to confront a group of people who demanded the release of four colleagues being detained at the district military command.
The hearing will be presided over by Andi Samsan Nganro, a career judge at the Central Jakarta District Court and assisted by Bogor District Court judge Binsar Gultom and three non-career judges: Heru Susanto, Amiruddin Abureira and Sulaeman Hanif.
The previous government had claimed that the clash took place following provocative lectures at the Tanjung Priok Rawa Badak Mosque, by preachers, including Amir Biki, a noted Muslim scholar who was also killed in the clash with security forces.
The military at that time claimed that 18 people died in the confrontation, while eyewitnesses said they had seen a truck loaded with dead bodies.
An investigation by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) stated that 33 were killed and 55 others injured in the violence. The identities of 14 of the dead are remain unknown.
The Attorney General's Office had named 14 active and retired military personnel in the shooting. The highest ranking officer in the list is the current commander of the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus), Maj. Gen. Sriyanto Muntrasan, formerly the head of the district military command's operational unit.
However, Gen. (ret) L.B. Moerdani and Gen. (ret) Try Sutrisno, the former Indonesian Military commander and former Jakarta Military chief respectively at the time of the bloodshed, were conspicuously absent from the list.
The fact made human rights observers claim the prosecution was just another sham, following the ad hoc trial on the 1999 East Timor mayhem which failed to bring the responsible superiors in the incidents to trial.