Padang, West Sumatra (ANTARA News) - The police`s way of handling terrorists at Pamulang, 30 km southeast of Jakarta, last Tuesday, has disturbed the public`s justice sentiment, an academician said.

"It`s always fatality, deaths. It happened when terror suspects used short-barrel guns were facing police personnel carrying long-barrel guns. It has an impression that the police are not professional," Prof. Dr. Duski Samad, an Islamic thinking dean of Imam Bonjor Islamic University (IAIN), said here on Friday.

The police should respect the public religious and justice sentiments, Duski, a prominent ulama (Muslim scholar) of West Sumatra Province, said.

Any one could see that the raid was linked to the planned visit of US President Barack Obama, he said. When an important US official planned to visit Indonesia, there was always raids against terror suspects, he said.

As the police personnel were numerous and well armed police, it would be nicer if they could have arrested them, instead of killing them, he said.

He also considered that the raid as a show of force and a political image building.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian Police Watch (IPW) has urged Indonesian Police Chief General Bambang Hendarso Danuri to stop shooting dead terror suspects with an excuse of fighting back.

"I wonder why they always had to shoot to death. Why weren`t they arrested alive," IPW Presidium Neta S Pane said in Jakarta on Thursday.

When the national police was led by Dai Bachtiar, terror suspects were rarely shot dead, unlike at present, the police`s Special Anti-terror Detachment 88 force (Densus) often shot suspected terrorists to death, he said.

"Yesterday, Dulmatin and two other suspects were shot to death. The police should have arrested them alive so that we could hear their testimony at court," he said.

(T.SYS/F001/S026)

Editor: Suryanto

COPYRIGHT © 2010

Comment
Send Comment