Indonesia dignitaries arrested over deadly stampede
2023.03.10 04:41
Indonesia dignitaries arrested over deadly stampede
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – After concluding that two soccer match officials acted negligently during one of the most deadly stampedes ever recorded in a stadium, an Indonesian court sentenced them to prison on Thursday.
During the derby match between Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya in October 2022 in Malang, East Java, 135 spectators were killed, many of them crushed as they fled as police fired tear gas into the crowd.
At the Surabaya court, judge Abu Achmad Shiddqi Hamsya stated that one match official, Abdul Haris, was found guilty “due to his negligence causing people to die and get severely injured.” He received a prison term of one and a half years.
Suko Sutrisno, a security guard, was also found guilty of negligence by the judges and sentenced to one year in prison.
The country’s football federation has imposed a lifetime ban on both men from participating in soccer-related activities because they worked for Arema FC.
Police firing 45 rounds of tear gas into the crowd, which FIFA, the world governing body of soccer, has banned as a crowd control measure, was found to be the primary cause of the stampede, according to an investigation conducted by the Indonesian human rights commission.
Additionally, the stadium was oversubscribed, according to the investigators.
Friday, the match officials’ attorney apologized to the Arema FC fans and told Reuters that they would not appeal the verdicts “as a form of moral responsibility.”
Miftahuddin, a 52-year-old victim’s father, stated that the verdicts were “lacking.”
“How did that sentence seem to be so light?” “To (his) daughter…who is in another realm,” he said, “would have given relief” if a harsher sentence had been added.
The cases of three police officers who are also accused of the same offenses will be decided at a later date.
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