Jakarta – Government prosecutors on Friday demanded 10-year jail sentences for 13 military officers charged with committing gross human rights abuses for their alleged roles in the massacre of more than 30 Muslim protesters 19 years ago.
Chief prosecutor Widodo Supriyadi said Captain Sutrisno Mascung and 12 other lower-ranking officers had been proven guilty of committing crimes against humanity in the incident, which took place on September 12, 1984, at North Jakarta's Tanjung Priok slum neighbourhood.
There is no trial by jury in Indonesia. Cases are decided by a panel of judges who weigh the arguments of the prosecution and defence before passing sentence. Supriyadi told the recently established ad-hoc human rights tribunal that the defendants had killed and tortured the victims, leaving 32 people dead and 55 others injured.
The prosecutors described the defendants' acts as a systematic attack on civilians. Mascung was the commander of Platoon III at the Air Defence Artillery Battalion when the incident occurred.
On Thursday, state prosecutors sought a 10-year jail term for Major General Sriyanto Muntrasan, the commander of the Army's elite special forces (Kopassus), on similar charges.
Last April, retired major general Rudolf Butar Butar was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the tribunal, after being found guilty of failing to control troops who allegedly killed the protesters.
The Tanjung Priok trial is the second case to be taken up by Indonesia's ad hoc human rights tribunal, which was set up in early 2002, largely on the prompting of the international community to try Indonesian officials blamed for the brutal slaughter of hundreds of people in East Timor, formerly an Indonesian territory, in 1999.
The Tanjung Priok massacre was sparked on September 7, 1984, by a soldier who entered a prayer room in a Tanjung Priok mosque to tear down posters which the government deemed extremist in nature.
Independent agencies put the death toll as high as 100, while relatives of the victims claimed almost 400 people were dead in the incident, now listed as one of the bloodiest crackdowns under Suharto's 32-year rule.