Pranowo rejects rights charge
Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Defense lawyers for former Jakarta military police chief Maj. Gen. (ret) Pranowo asked the ad hoc rights tribunal for the Tanjung Priok massacre to reject the prosecutors' indictment against him on Tuesday, saying it lacked legal merit.
Pranowo is charged with the unlawful arrest of up to 169 civilians, including Muslim politician A.M. Fatwa, and of detaining them at Military Police Headquarters on Jl. Sultan Agung, Central Jakarta, without warrants.
According to Yan Juanda Saputra, one of the defense lawyers, the indictment was absurd because it failed to disclose the names of Pranowo's subordinates for whom he was allegedly responsible.
"The indictment does not specifically reveal the names of Pranowo's subordinates who allegedly tortured the civilians who were at the time being detained at the Military Police Headquarters since Sept. 13, 1984.
"Moreover, prosecutors cannot blame my client for violence endured by the civilians when they were being detained at another military detention center in Cimanggis, Bogor regency, West Java, because it was the head of the center who was supposedly responsible for the alleged brutality," Juanda told the court presided over by Adriani Nurdin.
The lawyers also questioned whether or not the court had the right to hear the case, which occurred almost two-decades ago, arguing that the country's legal code did not recognize a retroactive principle.
Indeed, the court could not try the people unless there were regulations that stipulated the violations as crimes, the lawyers said.
According to the prosecutors, the detention period varied from one day to 15 days. Pranowo then moved all the detainees to the Cimanggis military detention center and kept them there for up to three months.
All of the detainees were crammed into one windowless cell and were deprived contact with their families. Soldiers from the Military Police unit also tortured them, causing some to suffer serious injuries, according to the prosecutors' indictment.
But the lawyers argued that Pranowo "had just received a request from the police to put suspected Tanjung Priok civilians in his custody due to a certain legal consideration."
"The civilians were charged with subversion, instead of ordinary crimes. Therefore, the police, along with the prosecutors from the Attorney General's Office, decided to place them in military detention."
Prosecutors charged Pranowo with violating Articles 7 and 42 of the Human Rights Law No. 26/2000 on crimes against humanity, which carries a minimum jail term of 10 years and a maximum penalty of death.
The Tanjung Priok killings were reportedly triggered by a military soldier who entered a prayer room (musholla) near the port of Tanjung Priok on Sept. 7, 1984, without obeying certain religious protocols.
He went in to tear down posters considered by the government as extremist in nature, but he did not take off his boots, an act regarded to be tantamount to desecration in a Muslim holy place.
Witnesses alleged the soldier smeared drain water on the walls as well. An outraged group of people then burnt the soldier's motorcycle. Four people, including the musholla's administrator, were arrested.
Five days later, Amir Biki, a local Muslim activist, led some 1,500 fellow civilians in a march to the nearby police station to put pressure on authorities to free the four detainees.
Eyewitnesses said that soldiers opened fire, killing scores of protesters. Biki was among the dead. Many other demonstrators were detained and allegedly tortured in connection with the demonstration.
There is conflicting information on the number of victims in the incident. The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) put the death toll at 33, but military authorities said only nine people were killed. Families of the victims, however, claim that almost 400 Muslim protesters were killed during the incident.