An Indonesian rights court opened the first trial on the massacre of 33 Muslim protestors in Jakarta's Tanjung Priok harbour area 19 years ago with an army captain and 10 soldiers as defendants.
A five-member panel of judges presided over the trial of Captain Sutrisno Mascung, who was a second sergeant leading a team of 10 soldiers when the shooting of Muslim protestors in Tanjung Priok took place on September 12, 1984.
One of the defendants, an army private, was unable to attend with the lawyers saying he was sick.
The defendants are charged in the 50-page indictment document with crimes against humanity by killing civilians and face between 10 years in jail and the death sentence if convicted, court officials have said. They are accused under a 2000 law on human rights and the penal code.
The Central Jakarta district courtroom was filled with at least 40 uniformed soldiers and scores of family members of the massacre victims, mostly wearing white T-shirts.
Some 60 families of the victims have already reconciled with the military, signing in March 2001 a document saying they had made peace with the soldiers they had previously accused of the killings.
The peace pact was the initiative of former Jakarta military commander and vice president Try Sutrisno, who will not stand trial for the killings despite a push by human rights groups for his prosecution.
Dewi Wardaw, the widow of Amir Biki, a leader of the crowd killed in the incident, said that she has refused to sign Sutrisno's peace pact "because it will run against what is in my heart. I will betray my husband and the other victims of Priok in their graves."
During the incident troops opened fire on Muslim activists gathering in North Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port area to protest the autocratic rule of then-president Suharto. An investigation by the National Commission on Human Rights found that 33 people were killed and 55 injured in the shooting spree. Relatives of victims claimed that scores were killed and eyewitnesses spoke of trucks carrying away loads of bodies.
Umar, 36, one of the victims who have served 12 months in jail for taking part in the violence, said: "My hope is just that the judges decide what is right."
Separate trials on the same case will see three other generals on the dock: retired major general Butar Butar who at the time was a colonel heading the North Jakarta military command, retired major general Pranowo who at the time headed the jakarta military police and the current chief of the Kopassus army special forces, Major General Sriyanto Mustrasan.
Sriyanto, then still a captain who headed the operation department of the North Jakarta military command, had ordered the defendants to stand guard at the North Jakarta district police where they later shot into the crowd.
The head of the judge's panel, Andi Samsan Nganro, has said that 33 witnesses have been summonsed to appear at the trial, which resumes on September 29 and under the law should be completed within 180 days.
The rights court was set up in 2001 to try soldiers and civilians accused of crimes against humanity during East Timor's bloody breakaway from Indonesia in 1999. It was also tasked with holding trials on the Tanjung Priok massacre.
The court has finished the trial of 18 suspects over East Timor but the hearings have been widely dismissed by rights groups as a sham. Eleven security force members and one civilian were acquitted.
Six people – three army officers, a former Dili police chief, the former civilian governor and an ex-militia chief – were sentenced to between three and 10 years in jail, but they all remain free pending appeals.