The Jakarta Globe, March 6, 2014.
Bandung. Prosecutors said Thursday they would seek the death penalty and life in prison respectively for a man and his nephew accused of dragging 34-year-old Fransisca Yofie behind a motorcycle by her hair for 500 meters, stabbing her with a machete and leaving her to bleed to death near her home in the West Java capital last year.
“We demand the death penalty for defendant Wawan, also known as Awing,” chief prosecutor Rinaldi Umar said at an indictment hearing at the Bandung District Court on Thursday, according to state-run Antara News Agency.
Prosecutors charged Wawan with violent robbery resulting in death under article 365 of the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum penalty of death.
Fransisca, a branch manager for automobile financing firm Verena Multi Finance, died near the boardinghouse where she lived on Jalan Cipedes in the Sukajadi subdistrict on Aug. 5, 2013, after allegedly being dragged by the suspects behind a motorcycle and fatally stabbed in what they claimed was a bag-snatching attempt gone awry.
The suspects were identified by police as Wawan, who allegedly stabbed Fransisca’s with a machete repeatedly, and his nephew Ade Ismayadi, who allegedly drove the motorcycle. Wawan told police he attacked the victim because she had refused to relinquish her bag.
Fransisca died of severe blood loss shortly after her arrival at a nearby hospital, after having been abandoned in a field for more than an hour.
A local resident said that witnesses to the crime chose not to help the victim for fear of being labeled as perpetrators.
At the indictment hearing, Rinaldi said that aggravating factors in the case included the facts that the crime occurred during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, that it was committed under the influence of alcohol, that Wawan had been arrested for a mugging in the past and the seeming lack of economic desperation on the part of the accused.
“[Wawan] committed the robbery with violence, not due to economic factors, as the defendant already ran his own business,” said Rinaldi, without going into further detail. “And the defendant spoke in circles when giving statements, which were hard to comprehend.”
He said the prosecution was not aware of any mitigating factors.
In a separate hearing also on Thursday, prosecutors demanded a life sentence for Ade for his part in the crime.
“Ade played a different role [in the alleged murder] from that of Wawan, who did the stabbing,” prosecutor Fauzi told Indonesian news portal tempo.co after the hearing.
He said that several mitigating factors could work in Ade’s favor — he was a first-time offender with apparent economic need.
The brutal killing drew public outcry and media scrutiny last year as rumors swirled that the photogenic victim’s jilted lover, Sr. Cmr. Albertus Eko Budiarto — a mid-ranking West Java Police official — had been involved in her alleged murder.
When searching Fransisca’s house, police found evidence of her relationship with Albertus in letters and photographs. When the relationship soured in 2012, Albertus reportedly had his subordinates spy on his former mistress, hounding her as she changed address three times in an apparent attempt to elude him.
Albertus admitted to having an affair with the murder victim until 2012, but claimed that he had not seen her since.
West Java Police slapped him with administrative sanctions for his extramarital affair with the victim but cleared him any involvement in the murder.
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do 6 maa 2014 - 21:10