SUMMARY
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Indonesia’s Supreme Court has overturned the acquittal of two teachers, a Canadian and an Indonesian, convicted of sexually abusing students at Jakarta’s most prestigious international school and ordered them to serve out their original 10-year sentence plus an extra year.
The reason for the decision Thursday, Feb. 25, appears to be a mystery, although local media reported Supreme Court Judge Suhadi as saying the panel of judges ruled that the legal considerations taken by the trial court, the South Jakarta District Court, had been appropriate.
The reversal dismayed foreign observers, diplomats and others in Jakarta. The pair had been freed on appeal in August and legal observers denounced the original trial as inept or rigged. The proceeding was widely viewed as undermining confidence in the rule of law in Indonesia.
In an email to parents, the school said it was “deeply saddened” by the rearrest of teachers Neil Bantleman and Ferdinant Tjiong after the Supreme Court sided with prosecutors. “We are shocked and dismayed by this unexpected turn of events,” the school said. “As before, we will do all we can to ensure that they will be safe when they are in custody. We are pursuing all legal channels to overturn this decision through a judicial review, and we believe that justice will eventually prevail.”
As of Thursday, both men were in police custody, with armed officers having raided Tjiong’s home at 2 am, rousting the family from bed and taking the teaching assistant away “like they were dealing with a dangerous criminal,” in the words of his wife, Sisca. Bantleman surrendered to police later in the day, according to press reports.
A judicial review of the decision is the last step in the appeals process and lawyers have said they will file one soon.
Winding road
The long-running case attracted widespread international criticism because of the bizarre nature of the charges against Bantleman, the Canadian, and Tjiong, the Indonesian. There is a widespread belief that the case was pursued in an effort to discredit the Jakarta Intercultural School, which sits on some of the most valuable land in Jakarta and could be subject to efforts by unnamed property developers to close it and take the land.
As the case moved from the notoriously corrupt South Jakarta District Court to the appellate court, it caught the attention of the US, Canadian, Australian and other embassies partly because evidence seems to have been manipulated and partly because of broadly voiced but unproven suspicions over the real estate situation.
On publication of the decision, US Ambassador Robert O. Blake issued a terse statement saying the US is “shocked and disappointed by the decision announced by the Supreme Court … It is not clear what evidence the Supreme Court used to overturn the High Court’s decision. The international community continues to closely follow this case.”
The outcome of the legal process, Blake said, “will impact international views about the rule of law in Indonesia.”
Attempts to reach lawyers for the two were unsuccessful. However, the case is certain to cast a shadow on efforts by President Joko Widodo to convince the international business community that it is possible to get rational decisions out of the courts. Continue reading the rest of the story at Asia Sentinel. – Rappler.com
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