Woman jailed for dumping baby in Garuda plane

JAKARTA (JP): A migrant worker was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment on Monday for abandoning her newly born baby in the toilet of a Garuda Indonesia aircraft which brought her home from Saudi Arabia.

"The defendant was found guilty of committing a crime and inhuman deed by abandoning the newly born baby in the locker of the toilet...," presiding judge Agus Budiarto of the Tangerang District Court said.

Defendant Imas broke into tears upon hearing the verdict and said she would consider whether or not to appeal.

The sentence was lower than the one requested by prosecutor Nelita Aryani, who earlier asked the court to jail the 28 year old woman for 18 months.

Imas, 27, left for Saudi Arabia in March 1999 after signing a two-year contract to work as a housemaid. In the new country, however, the native of Cianjur, West Java, was raped. She was sent home after the employer found out about her pregnancy.

The baby was born onboard Garuda Indonesia with flight number GA 983, on Nov. 1, 2000.

About an hour before the plane landed at Soekarno Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, the woman went to the toilet as she wanted to urinate. It turned out, however, that she delivered a baby girl. At first, Imas, a mother of two children, was really surprised because she did not feel like delivering the baby. But then, hit by panic, she tried to hide the baby, who was born alive. She wrapped her in toilet paper and put her in the locker, according to the court.

After cleaning herself, the woman returned to her seat. No one was suspicious as she acted as if nothing serious happened to her.

Soon after the aircraft landed, the baby was found by a member of the cleaning service staff. The case was reported to the police, who immediately checked all of the female migrant workers who had just got off the plane. Imas admitted that it was her baby.

The three-member panel of judges cited the mitigating facts: that the defendant admitted to the abandonment, that she was a rape victim and she has a husband and two children.

However, the judges underlined that abandoning the baby was inhuman and that she must be punished for the crime.

Her defense lawyers, from Women's Solidarity and from the Legal Aid Institute of the Women's Association for Justice (LBH APIK), criticized the judges for not considering the psychological impact of the case on their client.

"The judges failed to see the case in the context of the problems of her life and her background. She was a victim of sexual violence," lawyer Salma Safitri said.

The lawyers said that law enforcers should see violence against women from the perspective of survivors so that women could obtain justice.

Imas, an elementary school drop out, received legal aid only five days before the trial began, after the defense team learned about the case from newspapers.

Imas is now being detained at the Tangerang correctional institute for women, while her baby is under the care of an airport employee who has been married for seven years but had hitherto remained childless.

"He (the employee) fell in love when he saw the baby. His wife also shared the same feelings and they are now in the middle of processing the papers to adopt the baby," said Safitri.

Imas and her husband gave away the child happily, the lawyer said. (41/sim)