Jakarta – Indonesian police on Wednesday said they had identified 22 suspects in connection with a violent military-backed attack on the then-party headquarters of Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri in 1996.
Deputy police spokesman Senior Superintendent Saleh Saaf said the 22 men – 12 military and police personnel and 10 civilians – had been on a possible list of suspects since July.
Saaf declined to release the full identities of the military and police suspects but he gave their initials and ranks. However police sources told reporters the highest-ranking suspect was Major General Zacky Anwar Makarim, who was chief of the military's intelligence body under former president Suharto.
They said the civilian suspects included Yorrys Raweyai, the head of the Suharto-era Pemuda Pancasila youth group and four senior members of the government-supported faction of the Indonesian Democracy Party (PDI).
The former PDI members included former PDI chairman Suryadi, former party secretary general, Buttu Hutapea, former deputy chairman Alex Widya Siregar and party executive Jonathan Marpaung.
Saaf said the identification of the suspects was based on a thorough investigation by a joint team of military and national police formed by the Attorney General's office.
The 22 men were suspected of orchestrating and leading the July 27 attack on the headquarters of the Indonesian Democracy Party (PDI) in central Jakarta in 1996.
The attack led to massive rioting in the Indonesian capital which left at least five dead and more than 100 injured. Police at the time blamed members of the government-supported PDI splinter faction for the headquarters attack, and the rioting on Megawati's supporters.
Megawati was elected to the helm of the PDI in 1993 but a government-orchestrated party congress held by a splinter PDI faction ousted her and installed Suryadi to replace her in June of 1996.
Megawati and her allies never recognised the results of the rebel congress and continued to claim the leadership of the party as their popularity grew.
After Suharto's fall in 1998 Megawati's faction changed the party's name to Indonesian Democracy Party for Struggle (PDIP) to be able to take part in the first post-Suharto elections in Indonesia in 1999. PDIP took the largest number of votes, some 34 percent, in the election, the country's freest since the 1950s.