NGOs Allege Human Rights Violations in Police's Arrest of KPK Deputy
Jakarta. A group of prominent civil society groups submitted on Monday a report to the National Commission for Human Rights, or Komnas HAM, alleging possible rights violations in the police’s arrest on Friday of antigraft deputy Bambang Widjojanto.
The Anti-Corruption Civil Society Coalition, which includes the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), Indonesia Corruption Watch and Migrant, contends that the police violated an article of the 2002 Child Protection Law when they arrested Bambang at his home in the presence of his school-aged daughter and took the latter to the police headquarters.
Police investigators also questioned Bambang’s daughter during the car ride to the police headquarters. She was finally sent back home a short while after arriving at the headquarters.
“This clearly violates the daughter’s human rights,” Anies Hidayah, from Migrant Care, saidon Monday as quoted by Kompas.com.
Ade Irawan, a researcher from ICW, said the police also violated arrest procedures as regulated in the Crime Code Procedures, by arresting Bambang without serving him a warrant beforehand, as reported by Kompas.com.
The coalition has demanded that Komnas HAM investigate the indications of rights violations during the arrest and to publish its findings within the next seven days.
Bambang was conditionally released in the early hours of Saturday. He stands accused by a legislator from the Indonesian Democratic Party, or PDI-P, of compelling witnesses to perjure themselves during hearings over a district election dispute in 2010. Bambang at the time was a lawyer for one of the parties in the dispute, who was eventually declared the winner of the election.
The case was dropped by the police after the Constitutional Court ruled on the dispute, but was refiled by the PDI-P official, Sugianto Sabran, earlier this month, following the KPK’s decision to name Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, President Joko Widodo’s sole candidate for National Police chief, a graft suspect.
Joko, from the PDI-P, has since put off the process of naming a new police chief. Budi previously served as the security aide to Joko’s political patron, PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri.
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