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Dozens of Inmates, Including Terrorists, Flee Indonesian Prison Dozens of Inmates, Including Terrorists, Flee Indonesian Prison
(about 4 hours later)
JAKARTA — The Indonesian authorities were scouring the northern city of Medan on Friday for dozens of inmates, including at least 13 convicted terrorists, who escaped from a penitentiary the previous evening during deadly rioting over a power failure and water shortage that disrupted fast-breaking for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, officials said. JAKARTA, Indonesia — The Indonesian authorities, including an elite police counterterrorism unit, were scouring the northern city of Medan on Friday for dozens of inmates, including convicted terrorists, who escaped from a penitentiary the previous evening during deadly rioting that killed five people.
About 200 inmates escaped from the medium-security Tanjung Gusta Penitentiary after setting fires to prison offices and storming the main gates beginning around 5 p.m. The riot, which included inmates setting massive fires inside prison offices, was triggered by a power failure and water shortage that disrupted fast-breaking for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, officials said.
“We are still trying to determine the exact number of prisoners who broke out, though we managed to arrest 55 prisoners shortly after they escaped to Belawan,” Cmdr. Gen. Sutarman, the chief of detectives of the National Police, told The Jakarta Globe newspaper. Inmates holed up inside the Tanjung Gusta Penitentiary during the violence, which only ended on Friday afternoon, were demanding a review of a 2012 national government regulation that toughened requirements for paroles and sentence remissions for Indonesians convicted of terrorism, drug and corruption offenses.
Belawan is a port town about 15 miles east of Medan, which is the capital of North Sumatra Province. About 150 inmates escaped from the medium-security penitentiary after setting fires to prison offices and storming the main gates beginning around 5 p.m. Thursday, and by Friday afternoon 57 had been recaptured, said Heru Prakoso, a spokesman for the North Sumatra Provincial Police.
The Associated Press reported that three prison employees and two inmates were killed in the rioting, and about 500 inmates inside the prison continued to resist calls on Friday morning to surrender. Nine of the 14 inmates serving sentences for terrorism-related offenses were among the escapees, he said, and five of them were later captured. Two prison staff members and three inmates were killed during the riots, he said.
Local television reports showed hundreds of military personnel and police officers in riot gear surrounding the prison gates Friday morning and fires burning inside buildings. “The situation is getting better,” Mr. Heru said Friday afternoon. “The fires are out, the inmates are no longer doing anything dangerous, and the nearby community has resumed normal activities. The North Sumatra police chief has ordered all district police offices in North Sumatra to intensify their patrols to find the prisoners who escaped yesterday.”
Leopold Sudaryono, law programs coordinator for the Asia Foundation in Jakarta, said that 15 convicted terrorists serving sentences at the penitentiary were among the escapees, but two had been recaptured. He said the captured pair were serving sentences for organizing a bank robbery in Medan in 2010 and using the money to finance terrorist activities. He said the 14 terrorist inmates were either connected to a secret terrorist training camp in Aceh Province, which lies on the northern tip of Sumatra Island and was raided by police in early 2010, or a bank robbery in Medan later that year.
The riots were triggered by power failures and water shortages, leaving Muslim inmates without anything to drink to break their fast, Mr. Sudaryono said. Mr. Heru said that Detachment 88, the Western-financed and trained Indonesian police counterterrorism unit, had joined the manhunt for the escaped inmates.
“Tanjung Gusta is terrible because they are overcrowded by more than 250 percent,” Mr. Sudaryono said. “They have 2,600 inmates, while the capacity is only 1,000. So if you don’t get electricity that’s O.K., but if you don’t get water for more than 12 hours and you have to break your fast, it easily stirs up a situation.” One of the inmates at large, Fadli Sadama, was convicted of involvement in three separate bank robberies dating back to 2003 to finance terrorist activities, including the 2010 robbery in Medan.
He said the rioting inmates torched the penitentiary’s registration office, which contained the personal files of all the inmates, including sensitive information like photographs and fingerprints, to help them elude capture. Local television reports showed hundreds of military personnel and police officers in riot gear surrounding the prison gates Friday morning and fires burning inside buildings. By the afternoon, the prisoners remaining inside allowed the soldiers in to secure the penitentiary and began returning to their cells, according to a reporter at the scene.
However, he said, the information had already been backed up on an electronic database in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, located about 1,200 miles southeast of Medan, because the penitentiary was part of a pilot program to create a national corrections database. Analysts said the riot highlights overcrowding and poor conditions in Indonesian prisons as well as mismanagement by the country’s Department of Corrections. The violence was triggered by power failures and water shortages that began Thursday morning, leaving Muslim inmates without anything to drink to break their fast later in the day.
“Tanjung Gusta is terrible because they are overcrowded,” said Leopold Sudaryono, law programs coordinator for the Asia Foundation in Jakarta. “They have 2,600 inmates, while the capacity is only 1,000. So if you don’t get electricity that’s O.K., but if you don’t get water for more than 12 hours and you have to break your fast, it easily stirs up a situation.”
As the riots were winding down, a delegation of prisoners led by a terrorist convict named Marwan met with Amir Syamsuddin, Indonesia’s minister of justice and human rights, to protest the regulation that toughens the rules under which terrorism, drug and corruption convicts can be released from prison early.
Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based terrorism analyst, warned that inmates at other prisons could also take action to protest the regulation.
“What the government needs to do is avoid capitulating to violence,” she said. “Time after time it’s like it takes some massive protest to force them to review a regulation, when there is no reason to review that regulation. There is already a petition to the Constitutional Court to overturn the regulation.”
Mr. Sudaryono said the riot leaders torched the penitentiary’s registration office, which contained the personal files of all the inmates, including information like photographs and fingerprints, to help them elude capture.
He said, however, that the information had been backed up on an electronic database in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, about 1,200 miles southeast of Medan, because the penitentiary was part of a pilot program to create a national corrections database.
“That’s the first place they target in any riot,” Mr. Sudaryono said. “They figure that if they can wipe it out, they can get some benefit from it.”“That’s the first place they target in any riot,” Mr. Sudaryono said. “They figure that if they can wipe it out, they can get some benefit from it.”