Jakarta military court sentences 3 soldiers to life for killing civilian
2023.12.11
Jakarta

A Jakarta military court sentenced three soldiers, including a member of the elite presidential guard, to life in prison Monday for abducting and killing a drug store clerk, in a case widely condemned in Indonesia.
The court found the servicemen guilty of torturing and murdering Imam Masykur, 25, in August as they tried to extort money from him, lending weight to longtime allegations from activists that members of the nation’s security forces take part in human rights abuses.
The soldiers – Riswandi Manik, Heri Sandy and Jasmowir – had acted inhumanely and damaged the army’s reputation while posing as police officers and demanding 50 million rupiah (U.S. $3,200) from Imam as they tortured him, the court said.
“The defendants have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt guilty of committing premeditated murder and kidnapping,” presiding judge Col. Rudy Dwi Prakamto said.
The judge said he decided to convict the three for premeditated murder because the soldiers did not help Imam by taking him to a hospital when he complained of having difficulty breathing. And when he died, the army men decided to dispose of his body.
The court also ordered the soldiers to be dismissed from the army. The judge heard that the soldiers had carried out the same crime 14 times in several areas around Jakarta and managed to extort a total of 130 million rupiah (U.S. $9,100).
A video of a visibly bloodied Imam groaning in pain while being tortured after his abduction went viral on social media in August.
Imam’s brother had verified that he received the video from the kidnappers. In it, the victim is heard saying that his captors would kill him if he didn’t give them the money.
Fauziah, Imam’s mother who goes by a single name, denied the defendants’ allegations that her son was a drug dealer.
The case shocked the Indonesian public and raised questions about the discipline of the military.
Earlier this year, a military tribunal sentenced three soldiers to life in prison for their involvement in the murder of four civilians in the rebellious Papua region last year.
The four victims were beheaded and their legs cut off before their bodies were placed in sacks and tossed into a river.

The military prosecutor had sought the death penalty for the three soldiers, but the court said capital punishment was too harsh and that the right to life was a basic human right that the state could not arbitrarily take away.
The victim’s family also demanded that the prosecutor appeal for a death penalty, saying that the soldiers had violated their son’s right to life.
The defendants’ lawyer said they would appeal the verdict, arguing that the soldiers had only committed assault, not premeditated murder, and that they had not intended to kill Imam.
But Al Araf, a military analyst at the Centra Initiative, a think-tank in Jakarta, said a life sentence was more fitting than the death penalty. He told BenarNews that the soldiers’ poor living conditions were partly to blame for their actions.
“The welfare of the soldiers should be the priority. The budget allocation should be spent on improving the soldiers’ lives, not on them looking for money in wrong ways outside their duties,” he said.
“There has been a welfare gap between the top and bottom. The Defense Ministry needs to address this issue.”
According to the human rights group KontraS, security forces were involved in 42 torture cases – 17 people were killed – from December 2022 to November 2023.
Of those deaths, the military was responsible for four in six torture cases, the police for 11 in 31 cases, and prison guards for two in the remaining cases, KontraS said in a report released on Sunday.
Additionally, violence by the military rose to 61 cases in the January-November period this year, compared with 43 last year, said Ardi Manto, the deputy director of Imparsial, another human rights NGO. The victims, he said, included civilians and police officers.
“But the majority of the victims were civilians. The violence ranged from threats and intimidation to murder,” Ardi told BenarNews.
“Violators usually only get slaps on the wrist.”
Pizaro Gozali Idrus in Jakarta contributed to this report.