(New York) Human Rights Watch expressed outrage over reports yesterday that four suspects in the killings of NGO workers in Aceh had escaped from detention in Medan, North Sumatra. The international monitoring group called for an immediate investigation by the Indonesian National Human Rights Commission into the circumstances surrounding the reported escape and asked the government to provide tangible evidence that the remaining four suspects, all members of the Indonesian army, are still in custody.
"This was a test case for the capacity of the government to prosecute human rights violators. If the security forces can't even hold high-profile thugs like these, what hope is there for justice in Indonesia?" said Sidney Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "If the reports are true, this escape means that no civilian between Medan and Lhokseumawe is safe. The men who ran were guns for hire, and now they're guns for hire with a grudge." The Medan newspaper Waspada reported yesterday that the four had escaped five days ago.
The December 2000 murders for which the men were detained became one of the highest profile cases in recent years because of the involvement of the army, the survival of a key eyewitness, and the nature of the work the victims were doing. All were young volunteer fieldworkers for the North Aceh branch of a nongovernmental organization called Rehabilitation Action for Torture Victims in Aceh or RATA.
On December 6, 2000, while in a clearly-marked RATA vehicle, they were stopped on the road by a group of armed men, including both civilians and soldiers. After stopping at several army posts, their captors took them to an abandoned house outside the town of Lhokseumawe in Aceh and executed them. One RATA worker managed to escape and provided information to police that led later in December to the arrest of eight men. Four were civilian informers for the military, known as cuak: Ampon Thaib Geudong, 48, known as Teunku Pon; Abdullah bin Yusuf, known as Guru, 37; Maimun, known as Buyung, 44, and Madiah, 44. These are the four who escaped from the North Sumatra provincial command of the Mobile Police Brigade (Brimob) in Medan last Thursday.
The army detainees, reportedly in custody in the Bukit Barisan regional military command in Medan, are Maj. Jerry Patras, head of intelligence for military resort (Korem) 011 in Lhokseumawe and three of his subordinates, Sgt. Slamet Jawa, Sgt. Ermanto, and Lt. Harry Ruman.
"Someone should verify whether these men are still in custody or whether they, too, have vanished," said Jones. She noted that in another high-profile murder in 1999 in Aceh where the army had opened fire at a religious school killing more than fifty people, the commander in charge disappeared and was never prosecuted for the killings. Twenty-four others were convicted.
"The men who escaped were the Acehnese equivalent of militia leaders in East Timor," said Jones. "They were army-backed goons, and we find it odd that they escaped just as the army and police are embarking on a new military offensive in Aceh."
Coincidentally, Human Rights Watch last Friday sent a letter to Attorney General Marzuki Darusman asking for a clarification of the detainees' legal status. The Indonesian National Human Rights Commission had planned to use the RATA killings as a test case before a new human rights court established in Medan on March 12. The Banda Aceh police, who had arrested and investigated the eight suspects, turned the case over to the High Court in Aceh in late February for prosecution in a koneksitas court, a hybrid court involving both civilian and military judges. In the latter court, the eight would be tried for pre-meditated murder.
In a human rights court, they could be prosecuted for the much more serious charge of crimes against humanity if it could be shown the killings were part of a broader pattern of state-sponsored abuse. The Attorney General claimed that if he took the case away from the police and turned it over to National Human Rights Commission for prosecution in the new court, he would have to release the men pending their re-investigation on the new charges. The dispute over jurisdiction was unresolved at the time of the escape.
