Unidentified men shoot human rights lawyer's car
Unidentified men shoot human rights lawyer's car
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Two unidentified men fired shots at the parked car of
lawyer Johnson Panjaitan in the parking lot of the Indonesian
Legal and Human Rights Association (PBHI) offices on Jl. Cikini
Raya, Central Jakarta, on Monday afternoon, a witness said.
The incident happened at 4.10 p.m., or some minutes after
Johnson parked his green Feroza in the parking lot. Two shots
struck the left rear door of the car while another one hit a
hubcap.
Johnson escaped injury, according to witness Ecoline
Situmorang, as he had already left the car when the shooting
occurred.
Ecoline, who is also a PBHI lawyer, told The Jakarta Post that
Johnson, herself and two colleagues had pulled up in the parking
lot from the Central Jakarta District Court after attending the
trial of Faisal Saifuddin, a prominent figure in the Aceh
Referendum Information Center (SIRA).
After parking his car, Johnson went off to meet a colleague
while Ecoline bought some food at a stall near the parking lot.
"I was paying for the food when I heard three shots. I saw two
men on an old black GL Pro motorbike and a smoking gun in one of
the men's hands," said Ecoline.
She suspected that the men, who were wearing black leather
jackets, knew Johnson's car well and that they deliberately
picked his car as their target given that there were many other
cars parked there at the time.
A shocked Johnson was unable to give any precise motive for
the shooting.
"I think they're trying to terrorize me," Johnson said, adding
that intimidation by unidentified persons was nothing new for
him.
Johnson has handled many criminal cases that were connected
with politics. Among these was the case of last year's Jakarta
Stock Exchange bombing, in which the prime suspect, Acehnese
Tengku Ismuhadi Jaffar, was convicted and sentenced to 20-years
imprisonment.
Currently, Johnson is defending SIRA leader Faisal Saifuddin.
The defendant was has been charged with spreading antistate
propaganda during a demonstration outside the United Nations
building on Jl. M.H. Thamrin, Central Jakarta, last year.
During the protest, Faisal described the Indonesian government
as being neocolonialist.