Witness denies police report

JAKARTA (JP): A witness retracted in court an earlier statement he made that a student had intentionally hit a cordon of soldiers during a student demonstration in November last year.

The witness, Amirul bin Muhammad Sidiq Bakar, told the judges that police officers had pressured him to sign a dossier on the case against Anas Allamoedi, a student at the University of Indonesia's School of Law, who allegedly drove his car into a cordon of soldiers on Nov. 11, 1998.

"They yelled at me and forced me to sign the dossiers," the 27-year-old Amirul told the court, presided over by Judge Upoyo.

The dossier states that Amirul was in the car with Anas, who applied more pressure to the gas pedal when a group of soldiers suddenly moved toward the car and the students. The car, a red VW safari, ran into the troops and injured nine of them.

Among the statements that Amirul claimed were untrue was his testimony about the car speed at the time it ran into the soldiers.

In the dossier, Amirul testified that the car's speedometer read 70 km/hour when it hit the soldiers.

Amirul, who is unemployed, told the judges that he could not confirm the car's speed as he had ducked when the soldiers started hitting the car with rattan sticks.

He also retracted a statement he made about the car having two different license plate numbers.

Amirul later testified before the judges that Anas panicked upon seeing the approaching soldiers and unintentionally hit the car's gas pedal. (03)