Torture by Yogyakarta police of brawl detainee revealed

Asip A. Hasani, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Nineteen-year-old Aan Yulianto felt very happy on March 30, 2002, to know that the police were letting him and his four friends leave Yogyakarta's provincial police headquarters after being held there for almost two days for questioning as witnesses to a brawl on Jl. Magelang last month in which a police officer was stabbed with a knife by an unknown assailant.

But, when they were about to leave police headquarters, Aan said that he had a terrible pain in his abdomen.

"Then, I told the police right away that they must drive Aan to the hospital," Ego Chaniago, one of Aan's friends, told reporters recently.

Aan's father, the 52-year-old Suroto, quickly rushed to Sardjito Hospital after police informed him that his oldest son was receiving medical treatment for his injury.

Suroto had no idea what had happened to his son when he suddenly learnt that Aan, who had left home two days earlier, was lying unconscious in the operating theater with his face all swollen up.

Early on Mar. 31, 2002, he had to face the fact that his son had died after undergoing surgery. He cried out in his deep grief, all the time hugging and kissing Aan's dead body.

Doctors said that Aan must have been hit many times with blunt and hard instruments as several of his left and right ribs were broken, and his liver and lungs were seriously damaged.

A day after Aan's funeral, Suroto went to Yogyakarta Police Headquarters to complain about his son's death.

"The police had treated him as if he were a suspect. We have several witnesses who know that Aan was tortured in a police cell," the lawyer of one of Aan's relatives, Yanuar Bagus Sasmito, said.

According to Ego Chaniago, he invited Aan to go late on March 28 with him to a discotheque on Jl. Magelang where they were to meet Hasan, who had promised to give Aan a job.

Minutes after their conversation with Hasan, Ego saw Aan quarreling with a group of youths. In front of the discotheque as some of the group were about to physically attack Aan, a man, who later turned out to be a member of the Police Mobile Brigade identified as Totok Sugiyarto, ran up to try to calm them down.

"But, one of the group suddenly stabbed Totok with a knife in the back. Totok then collapsed on the ground," Ego recalled.

Totok was rushed to the nearby hospital, but police failed to capture the assailant. In the crowd of onlookers, Ego lost track of Aan's whereabouts. He only found that Aan had been taken into police custody later after he, along with his three friends, were also arrested for the same reason.

What really happened to Aan when he was in police custody remains unclear as the police are refusing to reveal the investigation results claiming that the investigation is still underway. Four of the eleven police officers who have been questioned were named recently as suspects in Aan's death.

A source at Yogyakarta Police Headquarters said that some nine members of the Mobile Brigade came to Aan's cell on the second day of his arrest and beat him savagely to give vent to their anger over the attack on their fellow Mobile Brigade officer, Totok Sugiyarto.

"They are like any other members of the police or military, who will do anything to get revenge if a friend is offended," the source, who asked for anonymity, told The Jakarta Post.

"Unfortunately, the police hadn't arrested the true suspect, and there was only Aan left for them to vent their anger on," he added.

Aan's death has drawn much public sympathy and strong reactions. Yogyakarta's branch of the Association of Indonesian Lawyers (Ikadin) has sent letters to the President, the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, the House of Representatives (DPR), the Indonesian Police chief, and the Yogyakarta governor to ask them to attend to the case.

Some other groups have demanded that the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) investigate Aan's death.

"We have to control the police in investigating cases as they can make efforts to engineer their investigations to help both themselves and their organization escape responsibility," local Ikadin chairman Kemal Firdaus said.

To the shock of the public, the police arrested last weekend Chaniago and his friend Agung as suspects in the assault case against police officer Totok Sugiyarto.