West Papua No. 1 News Portal | Jubi
Jayapura, Jubi – The panel of judges in North Jakarta delivered a verdict on Wednesday, March 10, sentencing Indius or Ivan Sambom to a year and eight months in jail, reduced by detention period, for firearm possession.
Sambom heard the verdict online, sitting at Mimika District Court in Mimika, Papua.
Sambom’s lawyer, Mersi Waromi from Human Rights Advocates Association (PAHAM) Papua said Thursday, March 11 that the judges found Sambom guilty for harboring armed group members in his house.
“In the consideration, the judges saw that Sambom let armed group members stay the night in his house. So he was found guilty of hiding firearms and explosives without any rights to do so,” Waromi told Jubi.
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Sambom’s case began when a shooting happened in the office of PT Freeport Indonesia, Kuala Kencana in Mimika Regency on March 30 last year. The shooting killed a New Zealand citizen identified as Graeme Thomas Wall. The shooting also injured two Indonesians.
On April 9, Nemangkawi Task Force arrested Sambom in his house in Kampung Iwaka in Mimika. Sambom was accused of having, storing or hiding firearms and other kinds of ammunition. On Oct. 27 last year the prosecutors’ team read the indictment against him, charging him with violating article 1 of Law on the State of Emergency No. 12/1951 on firearms and explosives.
Waromi said the verdict was more lenient than the prosecutor’s demand, which sought three years imprisonment for Sambom.
Director of PAHAM Papua, Gustav Kawer, said the consideration for the decision to sentence Sambom did not correlate with the charge. He said the considerations from the panel of judges also were not correlated with the facts heard in the trial.
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“The verdict does not match with the facts heard in the trial. When they arrested Sambom, there were no armed group members in his house, nor there were any ammunition. The trial is not supposed to be about the armed group members in his house but about whether or not Sambom possessed firearms. If not, the judges should have acquitted Sambom,” Kawer said.
Kawer said the trial should have checked the types of the ammunition, whether they matched with ammunition from a certain unit or department in Indonesian Military or the National Police. But they never checked although we knew that in a separate case, there were security personnel who were arrested for selling ammunition or firearms (to armed groups affiliated with the Free Papua Movement,” Kawer told Jubi.
Kawer said he would talk to his client about filing an appeal. He said because the sentence was reduced by Sambom’s detention period, Sambom would be free in about nine months.
Earlier on March 3, 2021, Sambom’s lawyers read their client’s defense, revealing alleged torture happened on Sambom during detention. Sambom was beaten and the police forced him to say where he hid the firearms, Sambom claimed in his defense.
Lawyer Waromi said during the hearing that the police took Sambom from his house on Jl. Trans Nabire in Timika and they put a burlap covering his whole head. He was beaten using a wooden stick until he was bloody and the stick was broken, Waromi told Jubi on March 5.
The lawyers said the trial failed to show evidence that Sambom was in possession of any firearms or ammunition.
The lawyers said the torture happened again in the National Police’s Mobile Brigade headquarters in Mimika Regency in Papua. “Sambom was tortured, beaten with rattan over and over again. His legs were chained and he was cuffed. The police asked him ‘where did you hide the bullets?’. It happened every day except for Sundays,” Waromi said.
Kawer said his client would not be able to answer the location of the bullets because he did not possess any firearms or bullets. “None of the witnesses also saw bullets,” he said.
Reporter: Benny Mawel
Editor: Aryo Wisanggeni G, Evi Mariani
