An Indonesian court yesterday began trial against five men on charges of negligence leading to the deaths of 135 people after police fired tear gas inside a soccer stadium, setting off a panicked run for the exits in which many were crushed.
The deadly crowd surge on Oct. 1 last year in East Java’s Malang was among the world’s worst sporting disasters. Police officers fired tear gas when fans flooded the pitch after Arema FC was defeated in a home match for the first time in 23 years by rival Persebaya Surabaya.
The match at Kanjuruhan Stadium was attended only by Arema fans, as organizers had banned Persebaya supporters because of Indonesia’s history of violent soccer rivalries.
Photo: AFP
Police described the pitch invasion as a riot and said two officers were killed, but survivors accused them of overreacting. Videos showed officers using force, kicking and hitting fans with batons, and pushing spectators back into the stands.
At least 11 officers fired tear gas — eight canisters into the stands and three onto the pitch — to prevent more spectators from taking to the field after the game.
An investigation team set up by Indonesian President Joko Widodo in response to a national outcry over the deaths concluded that the tear gas was the main cause of the crowd surge.
Photo: AFP
It said that police on duty had no knowledge that the use of tear gas is prohibited at soccer stadiums and used it “indiscriminately” on the field, in the stands and outside the stadium, causing more than 42,000 spectators inside the 36,000-seat stadium to rush to the exits — several of which were locked.
It was among the deadliest soccer-related tragedies since a 1964 crush in Peru killed more than 300 people.
Prosecutors charged the five men — three police officials who allowed or ordered officers to use tear gas and the Arema FC Organizing Committee chair and security chief — with criminal negligence causing death and bodily harm, which carries a penalty of up to five years in jail if found guilty.
Authorities in Surabaya, the capital of East Java province, deployed 1,600 security forces yesterday, including police and soldiers, in and around the Surabaya District Court, and the trial is being held remotely for added security.
Arema fans, known widely as “Aremania,” are prohibited from coming to Surabaya during the trial to avoid possible clashes with Persebaya fans.
Indonesia National Police have removed the police chiefs of East Java and Malang district and suspended nine other officers over professional ethics contraventions since the tragedy.
The fact-finding team, which included government officials, soccer and security experts and activists, also concluded the Football Association of Indonesia had been negligent and ignored safety and security regulations. They urged its chair and executive committee to quit.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RSS