Dossiers on Trisakti and Semanggi cases returned

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Human rights ad hoc prosecutors have returned the dossiers on three student shootings in 1998 and 1999 to investigators from the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) because of procedural shortcomings in some of the witness testimony.

Attorney General's Office spokesman Barman Zahir said on Wednesday that the dossiers were returned to the rights commission on Tuesday.

"We hope the commission can complete the dossiers soon because the prosecutors cannot proceed with the cases with the invalid dossiers," he said.

Barman said that his office's ad hoc prosecutors believed that the rights commission investigators should abide by the Criminal Code Procedures in their work on the shooting cases.

In the dossiers submitted to the prosecutors, the testimonies of witnesses were in the form of interview transcripts typed on normal paper, with the witnesses' signatures at the end of the transcripts.

According to procedures, the testimonies should be typed by the investigators on official forms and checked by the witnesses, who must sign each page of their testimony.

The secretary of the now-defunct rights commission team of inquiry looking into the shootings, Usman Hamid, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday the dossiers included transcripts of interviews conducted by a House of Representatives' working committee of Indonesian Military soldiers and National Police officers believed responsible for the shootings, which claimed the lives of more than a dozen of protesting students.

He suggested that the ad hoc prosecutors confirm the validity of the transcripts with the House.

In regard to the testimonies of civilian witnesses and one police officer included in the dossiers, Usman said: "If that becomes a problem and Komnas HAM wants us to complete them, then we will resummon the witnesses and make sure that they sign each page of their testimony."

The inquiry into the shootings, known as the Trisakti, Semanggi I and Semanggi II incidents, has dragged on for years because the military and police have refused to cooperate with investigators.

The security institutions question the validity of the inquiry and the rights commission, emphasizing that a military tribunal already heard the case of the shooting deaths of four Trisakti University students in May 1998.

A number of protesting students were also shot dead by security officers during demonstrations near the Semanggi cloverleaf in 1998 and 1999.

Many credit the Trisakti tragedy, and the later Semanggi shootings, for providing the momentum for the reform movement, but the current administration is seen as having failed to take serious steps to find and prosecute those responsible for the killings.