Witness tells of military torture

JAKARTA: A witness told the ad hoc human rights tribunal hearing the Tanjung Priok incident of 1984 of the torture of a group of protesters at a military detention center in Cimanggis district in the West Java regency of Bogor.

Witness M. Nur, a local cleric, told the court that during his detention after the incident, he observed that a number of fellow detainees were seriously injured.

"I saw that many of them were bleeding and had fallen unconscious," he said in a statement read by prosecutor Widodo Supriadi.

The witness, who spent three weeks in the military prison, also said that the detainees were not properly dressed.

Nur was testifying against Col. Sutrisno Mascung and 10 other military personnel who are being charged with opening fire on the protesters, which is considered a gross violation of human rights. -- JP