Indonesian soldiers are jailed for Aceh atrocity

Twenty-four Indonesian soldiers and one civilian were sent to prison yesterday for massacring 57 villagers in the troubled province of Aceh.

Twenty-four Indonesian soldiers and one civilian were sent to prison yesterday for massacring 57 villagers in the troubled province of Aceh.

The soldiers and their civilian guide were given sentences of up to 10 years for killing 56 students and a teacher from an Islamic boarding school in the remote village of Beutong Ateuh, central Aceh, in June last year. The trial is seen as signalling the determination of Jakarta's new government to crack down on human rights abuses by the Indonesian army.

The killings were carried out during a military crackdown on separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement, who want the province, on the northern tip of Sumatra, to break away from Indonesia. The rebels want a greater share of profits from the oil-rich region, as well as the right to impose Islamic laws.

The army claimed the villagers were caught in crossfire during a raid against guerrillas. But eyewitnesses said they were shot at point-blank range by the soldiers, who then set fire to houses in the village. In Geneva last week, Indonesia and representatives of the separatist movement signed a three-month suspension of hostilities. The ceasefire will come into force on 2 June but outbreaks of violence since it was signed suggest peace will be difficult to achieve.

Hundreds of armed soldiers and police were deployed around the court building and in surrounding streets as the judge announced the guilty verdicts. The trial, conducted by a joint civilian-military tribunal in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, was the first of half a dozen human rights cases scheduled to be heard in the coming months. Many involve the Indonesian military, which has seen its power reduced under the reformist government of President Abdurrahman Wahid.

In an attempt to pacify the separatist movement, President Wahid has promised to bring to justice the perpetrators of a campaign of torture, rape and murder waged by Indonesian security forces in the province during a 25-year war against the rebels. Human rights groups say 5,000 people have been killed in the last decade, including 350 this year.

Rebel activists and human rights groups criticised yesterday's sentences - ranging from eight and a half to 10 years - as too short, given the brutality of the crimes, and said the officers who ordered the massacre should also betried. Prosecutors had dropped demands for the death penalty, saying the defendants only obeyed orders from above.

The military commander of the operation, Lieutenant Colonel Sudjono, disappeared after he was named as a suspect late last year, and remains at liberty. No arms were found on any of the Beutong Ateuh victims. Some were executed in a field near the school after the army tried to capture the teacher, Teungku Bantaqiah, a well-known Free Aceh activist.

Hendardi, director of the Indonesian Human Rights Association, said it was not right that only lower-ranking soldiers were punished. He said: "The commanders who were responsible are going to go free."

Ismail Sahputra, spokesman for Free Aceh, put the blame higher. "There is no justice unless [the former armed forces chief General] Wiranto and [former president B J] Habibie are brought to court because they are the ones who gave the order to kill."

The Aceh trial concluded as at least 23 people were killed and more than 50 injured in fresh sectarian violence in Indonesia's Moluccan islands. Many of the victims were shot by security forces who opened fire in an attempt to separate warring mobs of Christians and Muslims in the streets of the provincial capital, Ambon.