Banjir Ambarita, Jayapura – A senior police officer in Papua province has been fired over a personal indiscretion and another for his alleged involvement in a gambling racket, while a third has been linked to a knife attack on a lawyer for a prominent activist.
First Insp. Angga, the chief of detectives at the Jayapura Police, was fired after being caught in bed with the wife of one of his subordinates, Papua Police Chief Insp. Gen. Yotje Mende told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.
Yotje said the affair was discovered when the woman's husband followed her to Angga's house and burst in on them in bed together. "He has to be held to account for his conduct," the police chief said, adding that Angga now faced an ethics tribunal.
Meanwhile, the police chief in the town of Sorong, Adj. Sr. Comr. Harry Goldenhard, has been fired for what Yotje called "a range of offenses, including backing a gambling syndicate" at the city's Night Market.
Yotje said his office had repeatedly ordered the Sorong Police to crack down on the illegal gambling known to take place at the market, "but it was never done." "I finally had to send a team to break up the gambling and shut it down," he said.
He added that Harry would also be brought before an ethics tribunal, while an investigation was underway into whether other members of the Sorong Police were also in on the gambling racket.
In a more serious case, a lawyer for Areki Wanimbo, a community leader and activist in Papua's Lanny Jaya district, reported being attacked shortly after taking on the case of the activist's "wrongful" arrest by Adj. Sr. Comr. Adolf Rudi Beay, the Jayawijaya Police chief.
Latifah Anum Siregar, a lawyer with the Democratic Alliance for Papua, or ALDP, told the Globe that the incident occurred on Tuesday night outside the hotel where he was staying. He said two men on a motorcycle approached him as he walked back to the hotel carrying a briefcase containing legal documents that he and Areki had prepared for a planned lawsuit against Adolf.
He said one of the men lunged at him with a knife and grabbed the briefcase. Anum sustained a cut to the arm, while the assailant and his accomplice got away with the briefcase.
Areki was arrested on Aug. 6 in connection with the arrests of French journalists Thomas Dandois and Valentine Bourrat for alleged immigration violations. The pair were reportedly making a documentary on the separatist movement in Papua, and police initially accused Areki of aiding them.
Anum said that although his client had been released, he still faced "arbitrary charges." He said Areki was suing Adolf for wrongful arrest and violating his civil rights by not producing a warrant for his arrest within 24 hours of arresting him. Asked about the accusations against Adolf and the attack on the lawyer, Yotje said he had not received any reports about the matter.
The Globe's contributor in Jayapura, Banjir Ambarita, was similarly stabbed by unknown assailants in March 2011, shortly after reporting on the sexual abuse of a female detainee by police officers at the Jayapura Police's detention center. No arrests have been made in the case.