AGO Not Processing 1997 Kidnapping
Wednesday, 06 December, 2006 | 14:49 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) has not yet been able to fulfill the request of the National Commission for Human Right to start investigating the case of causing people to disappear by force from 1997 to 1998. Thus, the AGO will not visit the detention place or invite experts as requested by the Commission.

This is because causing people to disappear by force happened before the reformation took place before the Decree No. 26/2000 on Human Rights Court was put into effect. Therefore, this heavy human rights violation is being investigated and decided by an ad hoc human rights court which was formed based on the House of Representatives (DPR) idea followed by the Presidential Decision.

“Because, so far there hasn’t been any DPR idea or the Presidential Decision regarding the founding of the ad hoc human rights court for a human rights violation of the incident of making people disappear by force,” said Deputy Attorney General for Special Criminal Act Hendarman Supandji, yesterday (5/12).

AGO spokesperson I Wayan Pasek Suartha previously said DPR’s recommendation is needed to decide the time and place the human rights violation happened. The authority to determine the time and the place is usually enacted by the Attorney General. However, in the case handled by the ad hoc human rights court, the DPR is the one to determine. “If there hasn’t been any recommendation yet, the letter for the investigation to be started can’t be made. That’s the problem,” he said.

Hendarman’s statement is related to the National Commission for Human Rights’ request on April 20. At that time the Commission sent a request to the Attorney General to obtain an order to visit the location suspected as the place the kidnapping victims were arrested. The Commission’s request was followed by the second request on June 26, 2006. This time the Commission asked for an expert witness.

One of the alleged places is the Army’s Special Forces (Kopassus) Tactical Command Post Cijantung. Lamria Siagian, a member of the Human Rights Commission investigator team for this case, said based on statements and information from witnesses, it is deduced that several victims who have not been found were arrested at that command post.

FANNY FEBIANA