Spero, October 25, 2006
Indonesia: The roots of Muslim Christian conflict
In Poso city there has been violence since Monday night. The unrest apparently
started when police were attacked by an armed group while they were on patrol. In the
ensuing violence, a young Muslim was killed.
Today, an interview with a Muslim leader in Poso is related in AKI where the Muslim,
Adnan Arsal, has blamed the police in the province of Central Sulawesi for a recent
rise in sectarian violence. On October 16, a Protestant priest, Rev. Irianto Kongkoli,
was shot in the nape of the neck as he bought ceramic tiles from a shop in Palu, the
provincial capital.
In Poso city, on the coast, there has been violence since Monday night. The unrest
apparently started when police were attacked by an armed group while they were on
patrol. In the ensuing violence, a young Muslim was killed. According to Reuters
India, the group who attacked the police patrol were armed with automatic weapons,
home-made pipe bombs and stones. Apart from the Muslim youth who died, three
people were injured in the clash, including one police officer.
Arsal's verion of events is different. He claims that 700 police officers had "invaded"
the city with no reason given, and they were terrorizing the citizens. Arsal stated to
AKI that: "The police continue to threaten Muslims but they never bother the
Christians even if, sometimes, they are the ones responsible for burning cars. It
seems like the police are protecting the Christians."
There are grave doubts about the credibility of Arsal's version of the current events. As
well as being historically involved in sectarian conflict on Poso, he has been
instrumental in creating the current climate of distrust between the two communities,
which I will describe later.
Whatever the origins of the current conflict, it is serious enough for the president of
Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to request the home ministry to gather as
much information as possible on the situation in Poso, to find out the root cause.
Antara News reports that M. Ma'ruf, the home affairs minister, said: "The presidents
wants us to solve the Poso problem peacefully. Of course, we have to reevaluate the
real cause of the recent incidents."
Ma'ruf has said that he will be consulting with the police, as well as community and
religious leaders. "The dialogs will be conducted to inventorize the real causes of the
problem," he said.
The Eklesia Church on Pulau Seram street, Gebangrejo village in Poso, was set on
fire early this morning, before 1 am. Though the blaze was brought under control
within less than two hours, the interior of the church was gutted. The same church
was recently the target of a home-made bomb, which was detonated outside the
building on September 30, according to Antara News. Two other bombs occurred
shortly after the attempt to bomb the church, with one happening in Poso's fish
market, and another at a bus station in the city. Where explosives had then failed,
arson has now succeeded.
One of the two largest Muslim groups in Indonesia is the Muhammadiya. It is
relatively moderate. Antara reports that Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of this group,
has claimed today that Muslim mass organizations were wanting the vice president,
Jusuf Kalla, to intervene and initiate a peace process.
In December 2001, Kalla, who was then Indonesia's coordinating minister for people's
welfare managed to get the main protagonists and sectarian leaders from Poso to
gather at Malino in South Sulawesi, to sign a peace pact. This agreement is called
the Malino Accord.
Din Syamsuddin met Jusuf Kalla last night, and said afterwards: "The other day in
Malino he was successful. Now, we want the Vice President to do it again.... Vice
President Jusuf Kalla on behalf of the government should take immediate action to
deal with the conflict in Poso."
Syamsuddin said the government should act swiftly to quell the Poso violence, and
claimed that Muhammadiya would give Kalla's peace proposals its fullest support.
Adnan Arsal (pictured below left) was one of those who signed the Malino Accord
under Kalla's gaze. He had been the leader of the Komite Perjuangan Muslim Poso (
KPMP or Committee for the Islamic Struggle in Poso).
However, last year, four Christian girls were attacked as they walked to school in a
rural district at Poso on October 29. Three of the girls - Ida Yarni Sambue (15),
Theresia Morangke (15), and Alfita Poliwo (19) - were decapitated, and the other ,
15-year old Noviana Malewa was hacked in the face, but survived.
 A measure of far Adnan Arsal is not trusted, even by the
authorities, comes from a claim which was made by Jusuf
Kalla, shortly after the incident. According to Asia News, the
vice president said that he believed that Arsal had been
involved in the decapitations. In February, a 31-year old man
who was suspected of taking part in the beheading of the
three schoolgirls, Sahal Alamry, was arrested in Poso. He
was a teacher at Arsal's Islamic boarding school, the
Alamanah Pesantren in Poso.
Alamry had been arrested after a detained Bali bombing suspect and terror
recruitment specialist, Subur Sugiarto, gave information. The police suspected that
Alamry was an associate of Noordin Top of the Islamist terror group Jemaah
Ismaiyah, responsible for the Bali bombings of October 12, 2002 (202 dead) and
October 1, 2005 (20 dead).
Adnan Arsal was indignant when one of his religious teachers was arrested. He said
that "police is orchestrating a plan to make one of my teachers look like a follower of
Noordin Moh Top."
Arsal claimed in his AKI interview yesterday that police had invaded his pesantren. "It
happened even in my pesantren", he asserted. "The police came, scared the children
who ran away in panic. There were two deaths."
To get an understanding of the current situation in Poso, and also of Arsal's
involvement and whether he is even credible as honest spokesperson on current
events, one must first look at the historical background of the conflict.
The Moluccan Conflict
From 1999 to 2002, at least 1,000 people died in Muslim/Christian sectarian conflict
on Sulawesi. This was part of a wider sectarian conflict, initiated by the vigilante group
Lashkar Jihad, on the nearby Moluccan islands. This conflict is sometimes called the
Moluccan War. It also lasted from 1999 to 2002, and saw 9,000 people killed. The
leader of Lashkar Jihad, Yemeni-Indonesian Jafar Umar Thalib was charged with
sowing hate in the Moluccas. He was acquitted on 30 January, 2003.
Lashkar Jihad, which is reputed to have been set up with assistance from politicians,
was voluntarily disbanded in October 2002. It was responsible for not only for horrific
massacres, such as that which took place in the village of Soya at Ambon in the
Moluccas on April 28, 2002, but also forced conversions of Christians. These involved
forcible circumcisions of males and females, some of whom were elderly. The
operations were carried out with no anaesthetic by Muslim clerics, rather than by
medically trained personnel. The Sydney Morning Herald of 27 January 2001 reported
that on six islands affected by the conflict, 3,928 Christians were forced to convert to
Islam.
Two days before Thalib was acquitted, a Christian leader, Dr Alex Manuputty was
sentenced to three years' jail for "promoting separatism". He had been arrested at
Ambon on April 17, 2002, eleven days before the Soya massacre. Released on
November 2003, Manuputty fled to the United States.
Following his own acquittal, Thalib said of Manuputty's sentence: "I question why you
would sentence him to only three years on charges of subversion while the charge
itself carries a minimum sentence of 15 years. He should have been jailed for 15
years." Manuputty wanted to gain independence of the South Moluccan islands from
Indonesia, which is 85% Muslim.
Conflicts on Poso
Most of the sectarian violence in Central Sulawesi, both during the Moluccan conflict
and at the present time, has been concentrated on the coastal town of Poso and its
surrounding district. What marks Central Sulawesi as special is that it is more or less
divided equally between Muslims and Christians. On Poso, there is an imbalance
weighted in favor of Muslims. Muslims number 44.99% of the total population in Poso
regency, Christians are 39.10%, Catholics 2.5% while the rest are Hindu and
Buddhist.
The protagonists of violence on Poso were not only members of Lashkar Jihad,
according to The International Crisis Group's Asia Report No 43 of December 11, 2002
(full pdf document can be obtained from HERE, with registration required).
The terror group Jemaah Islamiyah was behind some of the Islamic militia groups
active on Poso. These had names such as Laskar Jundullah (army of Allah). There
were several groups of this name, but one was formed in September 2000 as the
military wing of KPPSI, the Preparatory Committee for Upholding Islamic Law. This
was headed by Agus Dwikarna, later imprisoned as a JI member in the Philippines.
Though officially based in Makasar, it had its military headquarters at Poso. It
recruited members of another Islamic 'army", Laskar Mujahidin, and also the group
Darul Islam.
Darul Islam, founded in the 1940s with the aim of establishing a Caliphate in
southeast Asia, had provided Jemaah Islamiyah with many of its core members. From
1953 to 1962, Darul Islam launched a rebellion on Aceh in northwestern Indonesia. It
also had rebellions in West Java and South Sulawesi in the 1950s. It still exists, and
a cell on West Java has links with Noordin Top, the JI financier and recruiter.
JI was founded in Malaysia around 1995 by Abdullah Sungkar. Sungkar in the 1970s
also founded the Pondok Ngruki (also called Al Mukmin), the Islamic pesantren in
Solo, about 250 miles east of Jakarta. He had co-founded this school with the
"spiritual leader" of Jemaah Islamiyah, Abu Bakar Bashir. About 30 known or
suspected Islamic terrorists have attended this pesantren.
Bashir was arrested and jailed for "giving his consent" to the 2002 Bali bombings.
Currently there are three conspirators involved in the 2003 bombings, who are awaiting
imminent execution. One of these, Amrozi, had attended the Pondok Ngruki school,
led by Bashir, and said that it was a "JI institution". Another of those awaiting death
by firing squad is Imam Samudra. The Laskar Mujahidin was linked to the Ngruki
school and the MMI, the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI), which had been founded
by Bashir and others in August 2000.
According to the International Crisis Group, Samudra was directly involved with
recruiting for the "jihad" on Poso and the Moluccas.
From his base in a training camp in Cimalati, Pandeglang regency in Banten province
(West Java), Samudra would send JI operatives who were to recruit people for jihadist
operations in Poso and Ambon. These would approach students, and would invite
them to meetings, where they would be shown video CDs of the wars in Ambon and
Poso. These videos would be produced by Mujahideen KOMPOK, an affiliate of JI,
and would document atrocities supposedly carried out by Christians. After this, there
followed about four months of study and discussion about the impending darkness
that would come unless they fought for jihad. When the recruits were considered
ready, they would be sent to fight in Poso and Ambon.
Other groups involved in the fighting on Poso included Adnan Arsal's Komite
Perjuangan Muslim Poso ( KPMP). By the time Lashkar Jihad disbanded in early
October, 2002, it had chased out the fighters of the smaller group Laskar Mujahidin
from Poso.
The initial trigger for the violence in Poso and the Moluccas began in 1998, when the
dictator Haji Mohamed Suharto was finally forced to resign in 1998. During his rule of
twenty-one years' duration, he had forcefully suppressed Islamist groups in Indonesia.
Under his rule, the tradition on Poso was to have the regional governor or bupati
alternate from a Muslim, then to a Christian and back, to keep some sense of
impartiality and equilibrium. In 1998, the Muslim bupati, Arief Patanga, announced
that his successor was to be a member of his family, rather than a Christian, breaking
the tradition.
In the Christmas period of 1998, a minor fight broke out in Poso, outside a small
mosque. As a result, Poso erupted into violence. The city was left a smoldering wreck
as a result of the first conflict.
The fighting which took place
led to churches being burned,
such as the Oikumene Iradat
Puri Church in Palu. The
Reverend Irianto Kongkoli, who
was shot dead on October 16,
placed the blame for the Poso
violence on the regent or
bupati, Arief Patanga, who
officially held his post from
1992 to 1997. As we noted earlier, he said: "The one who should be severely
punished is Arief Patanga."
Christian homes and churches continued to be destroyed sporadically until April 2000
when the Muslim on Christian violence reached another peak. Then, there was
mounted a retaliation. A group called the Black Bat was involved in the Christian
attacks, as was another called the Red Group. As jihadists had either voluntarily
come to Poso to engage in the violence or had been sent by JI and Lashkar Jihad, an
influx of Christians had also come to take part in the reprisals.
Among the individuals who had come to Poso in April-May to join the counter-attack
against Muslims were Christians from East Nusa Tenggara province, which lies south
of Sulawesi island. Three individuals who came to Poso at this time were Catholics,
Fabianus Tibo, Dominggus da Silva and Marinus Riwu.
Their alleged involvement, and their subsequent fate, are instrumental in
understanding some of the excesses of the Poso conflicts from the time of the
Moluccan war, and also in understanding the violence which is currently engulfing
Poso.
The three men are said to have gone into an area where violence was raging to
evacuate children from a church-led school in the village of Moengko, Poso City. A
Muslim mob came to the church on May 23, 2000 and burned the church down. The
children and the three men escaped before the building was razed.
These three men were, however, accused of inciting murders of Muslims, and
orchestrating the violence which happened in the phase of the conflict during May
2000.
The Christian on Muslim violence was as horrific as anything mounted by the
Muslims. In one village, Sintuwulemba, an estimated 300 Muslims were massacred.
Their bodies were thrown in the Poso river, where they floated out to sea.
A peace accord was signed in August 2000, and though the conflict did not cease, it
subsided substantially. However, in April 2001, Fabianus Tibo, Dominggus da Silva
and Marinus Riwu were sentenced to death in a court case that was marked by
crowds of Muslims calling for their death. It has been argued that the three men
received an unfair trial, and that the judges ordered their deaths to appease the baying
Muslim mob surrounding the Palu courthouse.
The death sentence caused a resurgence of the conflict, and in August 2001, Lashkar
Jihad arrived in force to wage their war, burning Christian villages around Poso. Other
Islamist groups had already been operating for some time by then. Many of the
Christians took refuge in the highland lakeside town of Tentena, which is
predominantly Christian.
The government intervened and the Malino Accord was brokered in December of that
year. In January and February large stockpiles of weapons grew as fighters
surrendered them to provincial authorities, but soon, the terms of the Accord were
being breached by both sides. The Christians of the region were now without
weapons, even though killings of Christians continued.
One individual who had signed the Malino Accord in December 2001 became a victim
of its "justice" in August 2002. In mid August, two Muslim attacks took place upon
villages near Poso. Three Christians were killed in Peleru, and Mayumba came under
siege shortly after. Reverend Rinaldy Damanik, the head of the Protestant Church in
the Central Sulawesi region, had helped to evacuate Christians from both villages. He
was arrested on August 17 as his lorry was being besieged by jihadists. Police
arrested him, and claimed that he was transporting 14 rifles and explosives. Under the
terms of Malino, trafficking in weapons carried a sentence of either 12 years' jail or
death by firing squad.
While in prison in Palu, awaiting trial, an attempt was made to poison Rev. Damanik
on December 26, 2002, the fourth anniversary of the start of the Poso conflict. He was
hospitalized as a result. He was placed on trial on February 3, 2003 and on 16 June,
2003, he was given a three year jail term. He was finally released in November 2004.
The main conflict only came to end in October 2002, when Lashkar Jihad announced
that its main fighting wing in Poso, the Zabir, would leave the region of conflict. It was
at this time that Laskar Jihad was voluntarily dissolving itself. It has been suggested
that this had happened because Jafar Umar Thalib, who had been arrested in April
2002 for a speech made at Ambon mosque, in which he threatened not only
Christians, but the government, was awaiting his trial. It was suggested that the group
dissolved itself as a measure to stop Thalib becoming jailed. Whether the group is
really inactive, or merely dormant, is not so clear.
Post-Conflict Conflict
 Following the end of the conflict, violence has
continued sporadically ever since. On May 29,
2003, two men from Marowo, a village east of Poso,
were shot. One, a Muslim died from a neck wound,
and his brother-in-law, a Christian, was injured.
On June 2, 2003, the village of Kapompa was
attacked, with five houses riddled with automatic
fire. A christian man was killed. On the same day,
another man was shot dead in his home in Poso. On June 27, a Christian party held
at Kawua village, Poso, had a bomb thrown at it, but no-one was injured.
On July 9, a 32-year old Christian was shot dead by a sniper in Saatu village, Poso,
and the following day, a food stall was bombed, injuring four. One of these had a leg
and arm amputated. Also on July 10, in Lembomawo village, Poso sub-district, a
policeman and a woman teacher were shot as they rode a motorcycle.
On October 10, Beteleme village in Morowalu District, Central Sulawesi was atacked
with bombs and gunshots fired by men shouting "Allahu akbar" A man and a woman
were shot dead. On October 11 to 12, several villages were attacked overnight, and
nine Christians died. The body of a man who disappeared that night was found four
days later. On October 27, 2003, another Christian was killed, in the Poso region after
being shot at close range. The next day, the government acknowledged the role of
Jemaah Islamiyah in the Poso conflict.
On November 11, 2003, a bus was hit with a low-explosive bomb in Tentena. Four
days later, Reverend Tadjodja, synod treasurer of the Central Sulawesi Christian
Church was shot dead along with his nephew.
On November 16, a Christian was dragged from his motorcycle and beaten to death
by a Muslim mob. His body was dumped in the market, where another Christian's
body lay. On November 24, a bomb was discovered at Palu Ekklesia Pentecostal
Church. It was the third time a bomb had been placed there since 2001.
Attacks continued in 2004. On July 18 2004, a woman reverend was shot dead while
she was conducting a service at the presbyterian Effata Church in Palu. 29-year old
Susianti Tinulele was shot several times by a single attacker, who had an accomplice
outside the church. Four of her parishioners were injured.
The same day, a bomb blew up outside a packed sports hall in Poso. No-one was
injured. The previous day, Saturday July 17, Helmy Tombiling, the wife of army officer
James Harimisa, was found dead outside her home in Sayo, Poso city. She had been
stabbed nine times in the chest.
A bomb attack in May 2005 at a market in Tentena saw 22 people killed and 30
injured. On October 27, a bomb went off on a bus carrying 11 passengers from the
Christian enclave of Tentena, injuring one person.
On October 29 2005, the four Christian schoolgirls were attacked with machetes, with
three beheaded. Two of the girl's graves are shown above right. On November 28, two
Christian girls, Ivone Natalia Moganthi, 18, and Siti Nuraini, 18, were shot in the head
at point-blank range. They survived, and it was later revealed that their assailant was a
Muslim police brigadier, somewhat weakening Arsal's claims that all police in Poso
are "pro-Christian".
More attacks upon Christians continued in November in Poso and Palu in Central
Sulawesi, with several killed. A machete attack on a group of three Christian girls in
Palu saw one girl nearly losing her arm and another, called Afrianti, dying from a chop
to the neck.
On December 30, a bomb was set off in a pork market frequented only by Christians,
killing six people in Palu.
The situation had deteriorated so far that Gus Dur, moderate former head of the other
main Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which has 40 million members, claimed in
December that the government's investigation into the Poso conflict was "useless".
Security minister, Admiral Widodo had been given the task of supervising a
commission of inquiry. Gus Dur said that the issue was too important to be managed
that way.
He said: "The violence in Poso was not of an inter-religious nature. It was orchestrated
by someone who had specific interests in the area. The population loses its faith in a
government which is incapable of reacting to something like this. There is a time when
enough is enough. I do not believe in special squads anymore. My patience has its
limits." He was not alone in the desire for an independent inquiry. Both Muslims and
Christians wanted a investigation, suspicious that Widodo's efforts would probably
conceal more than they would reveal. Attacks on Christians in Poso continued at the
start of this year. No independent inquiry has been launched.
The Executions Of the Three Christians
Recently, the killings and attacks have
started again. On September 10 we
wrote that on September 9, a 20-year
old Christian woman died after a bomb
was thrown at her house in Poso town,
and on September 6, a 50-year old
Christian man, John Tobeli, was killed
by a bomb in Poso district.
Shortly after these attacks, four Muslims were arrested, and upon questioning, they
said that they had carried out the bomb attacks because they "wanted to seek
revenge for what Tibo and the others had done." This reference was to the three
people who had been sentenced to death in April 2001 for their supposed involvement
in Poso killings from May 2000.
Fabianus Tibo, Dominggus da Silva and Marinus Riwu were due to have been
executed by firing squad at midnight on the morning of August 12. European leaders,
US Senators and Pope Benedict XVI had appealed for leniency. They were reprieved
temporarily, only an hour before the sentence was due to be carried out.
Fabianus Tibo had revealed the names of several individuals whom he claimed had
really been responsible for causing the Christian on Muslim violence.
The Jubilee Campaign had argued for clemency for the three Catholics, and in a pdf
report on the case, mention is made of the names of these 16 individuals. Adnan
Arsal, at a meeting in December 2004, demanded that the individuals named by Tibo
be investigated. His interest was not like the Rev. Irianto Kongkoli, who sought to have
the three men exonerated. Adnan Arsal just wanted to have more Christians to
punish.
Sometimes, Arsal had made gestures of public citizenship. After the decapitation of
the three schoolgirls on October 29, in December, he handed over to the authorities
two Muslims, Andi Ipong and Muhammad Yusuf who were wanted for their involvement
in Muslim on Christian violence. In hindsight, it is more likely that he made this
gesture to deflect suspicions which had fallen on him, when vice-president Jusuf Kalla
had suggested that he had involvement with the beheadings of the schoolgirls.
The delay in the executions of Tibo, Marinus and da Silva had taken place because of
Indonesia's Independence Day, which fell on August 17. There was a widespread
feeling of injustice about the case. Muslim violence had initiated the conflict, yet
though Muslims had been sentenced for their part in the killings, not a single one had
been sentenced to death. The maximum penalty for any Muslim perpetrator of
inter-faith violence was 15 years' imprisonment.
On August 11, before the men had been due to die, thousands of people protested in
their home province of East Nusa Tenggara.
What made matters more galling for Christians was the manner in which the
government seemed to place the importance of the three Christian men in some
equivalence with the three Jemaah Islamiyah activists, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim,his
brother Ali Gufron and Imam Samudra, who had helped kill 202 people on Bali, and
had shown no remorse. Some analysts said the government did not want to invoke
public anger in the predominantly Muslim nation by executing the Christians before
the 3 Islamist terrorists.
Mahendratta, lawyer for the three Muslims said: "People were asking, 'Why Amrozi
first, and not Tibo?' For me, it is a simple matter: just follow the death row queue. Tibo
and his friends got convicted first, and they should be executed first."
While Christians protested, and pleaded for clemency, Adnan Arsal was demanding
that the three Christians should be killed. In September, he was reported as saying
there was no doubt Tibo was involved in a series of killings of Muslims. He said: "The
Muslim community generally thinks he was the actor in the field. It has been proven
that he was involved in the killings."
On September 20, Asnan Arsal and many other Islamist activists had their wishes
granted, when Tibo, Riwu and da Silva were taken from their jail cell in Palu and
escorted to the Palu airfield. There they were then shot. All of their requests, such as
to be allowed to be laid in state in Palu Cathedral, were denied by the authorities.
Robert Bala Keitimu, a lawyer for one of the three, said that the case should be
reopened, as the names of 16 individuals, who are believed to have done the killings
for which the men were executed, are now known. He suggested the government
wanted to cover up the truth behind the Poso riots.
There immediately followed rioting from Christians, both at East Nusa Tenggara, the
province where the executed men had lived, and at Poso. A prison was stormed open
at Atuamba on East Timor, where Dominggus da Silva had lived, and on Flores island,
where two of the men had been born, Christians carried machetes and ran through the
streets.
In Poso, thousands of Christians took to the streets, looking for Muslim motorists.
Police had to seal off the area. Tyres were burned on the street, and protesters threw
rocks at policemen. One police officer was injured. By the end of the afternoon, the
unrest in Poso had died down. A few days later, there were bomb attacks at Poso,
including the unsuccessful September 30 attack upon the Ekklesia church. On
October 1, a Christian was pulled off a bus in Poso, and stabbed. He survived the
attack.
On October 9, the bodies of two Muslims were discovered near Poso. It appears that
they had been killed in the orgy of aggression which had followed the execution of the
three Catholics.
Between the time of the execution and October 10, there had been five explosions in
Central Sulawesi, and tensions between Muslim and Christian communities were
becoming strained.
There seem to be figures involved in the conflict as ringleaders. Adnan Arsal is at the
cheap end - he merely wants to have Muslim power over other groups in the region,
and will lie, betray and incite killings to achieve this. As a native of the region, he at
least has a vested interest in the province. This year, a new Christian bupati was
chosen as head of the Poso regency, and Adnan Arsal has led violent demonstrations
against the Christian's tenure of the role.
But when one considers the manner in which Reverend Ridyanti had been "framed" by
police, the long amount of time it took for the government to admit the involvement of
Jemaah Islamiyah in the conflict, the bizarre manner in which Umar Jaffar Thalib,
already rumored to have had political sponsors, managed to become acquitted, all
point to the potential that people with power and influence had acted behind the
scenes to orchestrate the violence in Poso.
******************
Today, two prisoners were released early from their detention. The move was made as
a goodwill gesture to celebrate Eid ul-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. The details are carried
by Deutsche Presse Agentur via Monsters & Critics and Antara News.
One of the individuals to be released is a cannibal. Sumanto walked out of Purwokerto
Prison this morning. He had been given a five year sentence for digging up and eating
an 81-year old woman in 2003. She had been recently buried. In addition, Hutomo
'Tommy' Mandala Putra, a son of the corrupt former dictator Suharto, who is serving a
10-year jail term for murder, had his sentence reduced. He already is allowed out on
medical appointments.
The other individual to be released this morning was a terrorist who had played a part
in the 2002 Bali bombings. He was due to have been freed at the end of December,
but had 45 days of his jail term removed. Muhammad Rudi bin Salim alias Mujarot
was released from Denpasar jail in Bali this morning. Eight other convicts received
45-day jail term reductions as an Eid gesture.
Related Articles:
AKI
Reuters India
Antara News |
A measure of far Adnan Arsal is not trusted, even by the
authorities, comes from a claim which was made by Jusuf
Kalla, shortly after the incident. According to 
Following the end of the conflict, violence has
continued sporadically ever since. On May 29,
2003, two men from Marowo, a village east of Poso,
were shot. One, a Muslim died from a neck wound,
and his brother-in-law, a Christian, was injured.