Padang – Two Indonesian communists walked free from their prison here Thursday after serving 33 years there for their alleged involvement in the 1965 coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

Sri Suharjo, 71 and Buyung Kenek, 59, were officially released from the Muara jail in a brief ceremony attended by the local head of the justice office and the families of the released political prisoners.

They were among the 10 ageing political prisoners sentenced to death or life imprisonment more than 30 years ago for their alleged part in the 1965 coup, but pardoned by the government of B.J. Habibie in March.

Suharjo was the former secretary of the Riau province central committee of the PKI and was on death row. Kenek, a member of the Padang-Pariaman chapter of the PKI-affiliated People's Youth Organisation, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

On March 24, the government announced that 10 political prisoners linked to the PKI and the 1965 coup were freed under an amnesty that was given as part of the Habibie government's drive for wide-ranging reforms.

They included former colonel Abdul Latief, 73, accused of taking part in the murder of six generals during the 1965 coup. He was at first sentenced to death but the sentence was later commuted to life.

The abortive 1965 coup catapaulted then lieutenant general Suharto to the fore. In 1966 Suharto banned the PKI, then the world's second largest communist party after China's, and all communist teachings.

Official figures show that at least half a million people were killed and 700,000 more jailed in the aftermath of the coup. Hundreds of thousands of so-called "C-category" prisoners, the lightest category, were released from the prison island of Buru in the Moluccas in 1979.