Witness denies police report

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)