Anastasia Winanti Riesardhy & Markus Junianto Sihaloho – The military chief of staff has promised full transparency in the trial of a group of soldiers accused of the summary execution of four detainees in police custody, but questions still linger over how fair the process will really be.

Adm. Agus Suhartono said in Jakarta on Monday that the military tribunal of the 11 Army Special Forces (Kopassus) members charged with the deadly raid on the Cebongan detention center in Yogyakarta's Sleman district would be "open and transparent" in a bid to "satisfy public expectations of justice."

"The investigation is now in the hands of the [Yogyakarta] regional military command, so please trust in the military tribunal process," he said. "We welcome the media to cover the trial, keep the public informed and provide constructive criticism of the process."

The Kopassus team is accused of having staged the attack in the early hours of March 23 out of revenge. The four detainees they gunned down were alleged to have killed a Kopassus member in a nightclub brawl four days earlier.

While the military has been praised for its rare admission, especially involving Kopassus, an elite unit whose alleged transgressions of human rights have long characterized impunity in the armed forces, rights activists are warning of a campaign to paint the accused as heroes and the slain as menaces to society.

Hendardi, the head of the Setara Institute, a rights watchdog, said in a statement on Monday that there was a "systematic effort" under way to ensure the case was not fully resolved.

"The aim is ultimately to get the public to forget [about this case], in the exact same way that the military used in the past to justify crimes committed by the state," he said in a press release.

In a press conference on April 4 at which the Army admitted that the attack was carried out by Kopassus, the chief investigator repeatedly referred to the victims as thugs and to the perpetrators as dutiful soldiers with a strong sense of solidarity for a fallen comrade.

Haris Azhar, the coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), accused the government of also trying to play down the gravity of the crime.

He denounced a statement last week by Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro that no rights violations had occurred as "an attempt to cover up the facts."

"The minister shouldn't try to steer this case to a false resolution. He should push for due legal process, which in this case should be a human rights tribunal," Haris said over the weekend.

Hendardi urged the public "not to be swayed by this propaganda and to keep monitoring the Cebongan case and pushing for a full resolution."

He added that this could be achieved by urging President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to establish an independent investigative team to look into the matter, and to issue a regulation in lieu of law, or perppu, that would allow for the suspects to be tried in a criminal court instead of a military tribunal.

Agus has insisted that the men will be tried in the military court, but rights activists argue that these courts tend to be more lenient than criminal courts.

Denny Indrayana, the deputy justice minister, said there could be no justification for the killings and demanded that the soldiers be punished to the fullest extent of the law if convicted by the military court of premeditated murder.

"The perpetrators must be held fully accountable and must receive a punishment befitting their crime," he said. "That means that if the facts prove that this brutal act was premeditated, then the punishment for premeditated murder must be meted out."

The maximum punishment for premeditated murder stipulated under the Criminal Code is the death sentence.

"There are a lot of questions and criticism about how this case is being handled internally by the military," the deputy minister went on.

"There are concerns that a conflict of interest will prevent the case from being fully resolved, which is why there are now calls for an independent fact-finding team to be established and for the perpetrators to be tried in a civilian court."