Sudjono 'ordered killings in Bantaqiah': Witness
Sudjono 'ordered killings in Bantaqiah': Witness
BANDA ACEH, Aceh (JP): A military witness told a court here on Saturday that Lt. Col. Sudjono ordered the killing of 23 wounded people after last year's murder of Tengku Bantaqiah and his followers in West Aceh.
Sudjono, who at the time was the intelligence chief of the Lilawangsa Military Command overseeing Aceh, has been missing since November.
During a four-hour session, a panel of military and civilian judges presided over by Ruslan Dahlan cross-examined four out of the 10 witnesses scheduled to present their testimonies.
Second Sgt. Subur of the Central Aceh Military District Command told the panel of judges that the 23 people wounded during the shooting in Beutong Ateuh village in West Aceh last year were taken away in a military truck.
"After the shooting, two trucks were used to carry the wounded. I did not count the victims properly as they were laying along the street. I got the total number of casualties (23) from my colleagues," Subur said.
He said the victims should have been taken to Takengon, the capital of Central Aceh, for medical treatment.
"But after several kilometers, Lt. Col. Sudjono ordered one of the defendants, First Lt. Tri Joko, to take six of the injured out of the truck and 'send them to school'. It literally means killing them.
"The six were taken behind a hill and I heard shots after that," he testified.
Subur said none of the people ever reached Takengon as all of them were killed along the way.
Sudjono was in charge of supervising an antirebel raid in the remote Beutong Ateuh village on July 23 last year, which resulted in the death of Islamic religious teacher Tengku Bantaqiah and 57 of his followers.
The military has maintained that Bantaqiah and his students were separatist rebels and were killed during a shoot out. The crackdown was launched following an intelligence report that Bantaqiah and his students kept weapons.
The judges were angry with Subur, who repeatedly changed part of his testimony. He told the court he was standing about 300 meters away from the site of the incident, not 50 meters as he previously stated in the dossier.
Another witness, First Lt. Surya, testified he was informed by one of Bantaqiah's students caught by the military, Kamaruddin, that the Muslim teacher had 100 followers and kept 100 firearms.
Surya also said he was not involved in the raid on Bantaqiah's Babul Mukaromah Islamic boarding school.
The third witness, First Lt. Hindarjo, said he was assigned to block the area during the operation and he heard gunfire from a distance of 10 kilometers.
The trial was adjourned until Monday.
Separately, Bantaqiah's second wife Man Farisah said she was willing to testify as long as she had a security guarantee.
"I witnessed almost all the incident but to my surprise I was not summoned," she said on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels claimed responsibility for Friday's grenade attacks on military and police installations, saying they were revenge for the security forces' oppression of the people.
"But we did not rob the BRI bank and attack civilian installations," GAM spokesman Teungku Maad Muda said shortly after the blasts on Friday.
Three people, one of whom was a policeman, were killed and 17 others were injured in series of violent incidents in Aceh on Friday.
The two civilians were killed during a robbery in Takengon, where a gang of unidentified men intercepted a BRI car carrying Rp 3.75 billion and made away with the money. (50/51/edt/sur)