Tanjung Priok rights tribunal to begin

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

After 19 years of waiting, justice seekers may witness the opening of an ad hoc human rights tribunal on the Sept. 12, 1984 bloodshed in Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta.

The Jakarta Human Rights Court appointed on Thursday a five- member panel of judges to oversee the hearing, which will be presided over by Andi Samsan Nganro, a career judge from the Central Jakarta District Court.

Andi will be assisted by another career judge Binsar Gultom and three non-career judges: Heru Susanto, Amiruddin Abureira and Sulaeman Hanif.

"We're expected to open the hearing next week, but we still need more time to look at the dossiers," Andi told The Jakarta Post, without mentioning the date of the hearing.

The court had only received one combined dossier of several defendants -- out of 14 active and retired military officers declared suspects in the shooting of anti-government protesters outside a mosque in Tanjung Priok area.

The dossier, according to Andi, is of Col. Sutrisno Mascung and his collaborates -- soldiers of the North Jakarta Military District, at the time of the tragedy.

The highest ranked military officer included in the list of suspects is the current commander of the Army's Special Forces (Kopassus), Maj. Gen. Sriyanto Muntrasan, who was Sutrisno's superior as the head of the military district's operational unit at the time.

However, L.B. Moerdani and Try Sutrisno -- Indonesian Military commander and Jakarta Military chief respectively at the time of the bloodshed -- were absent from the list. The absence was conspicuous to human rights observers.

The Attorney General's Office had worked on the investigation of the case since 2000, but later suspended it for over a year following an islah (Islamic peace pact) made between military officers, led by Try Sutrisno, and relatives of the victims.

But the unrelenting protest of other victims excluded from the peace pact, and the demands of rights activists, forced prosecutors to resume investigations.

Relatives of the victims say the incident claimed more than 400 lives, while the military claims only 18 people were killed.

The investigation by the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) found that 33 were killed -- including 14 people whose identities remain unknown -- and 55 were injured.