Police Arrest Five Officers for Alleged Poso Torture

The Jakarta Globe, March 08, 2013,


The Central Sulawesi Police have detained five of its members over the alleged torture of militants after a video posted on YouTube showed a suspect being shot and others abused.

The blurry 14-minute video posted by several Islamic groups on their websites and YouTube depicts officers forcing a man to strip to his underwear before they shoot him, apparently in the chest.

“We arrested five policemen today and others are still being questioned,” national police detective chief Sutarman said in a text message, without giving further details.

The then-suspected terrorists were arrested for their purported involvement in the shooting of four members of the police’s mobile brigade (Brimob) in Poso — dubbed a hotbed of terrorism — during December of 2012.

They were held for a week before police released them due to a lack of evidence. However, they left their detention with bruises and other injuries sustained all over their bodies.

Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Dewa Parsana said the five officers, who were detained on Wednesday, would be charged under Article 351 of the Criminal Code on assault.

The police’s move came just a week after an incriminating video was leaked onto YouTube.

The video sparked outrage among activists and Islamic groups, and there are concerns about retaliatory attacks in Poso, where two officers investigating an alleged militant training camp in October were found buried with their throats slit.

A consortium of Islamic organizations on Thursday called for an evaluation and audit of the elite unit, which it accused of torture and extrajudicial killings.

"If these steps are not carried out, then the unit should be dissolved. We're concerned Indonesian Muslims will become sympathetic to terrorists if such police action continues," Din Syamsuddin, chair of the country's second-largest Muslim organization Muhammadiyah, told reporters.

The video was earlier thought to concern the alleged instances of torture that took place in December 2012, but it was later determined that some of the footage was from January 2007 and showed the arrest of terrorist suspect Rahman “Wiwin” Kalahe and several others.

Wiwin, along with some of his cohorts, was proven guilty of beheading three female high school students and shooting two others in Poso in 2005. He was sentenced to 19 years in jail by the South Jakarta District Court in 2007.

Sutarman said earlier that the video was a compilation of the 2007 and 2012 incidents.