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Police murder trial begins as calls for reform ring louder
The Ferdy Sambo case, which began on Monday, has been touted as the biggest scandal in the history of the police corps, and has galvanized calls for police reform.
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Ferdy Sambo, a former National Police general embroiled in a murder scandal, attends his trial at South Jakarta District court, in Jakarta, on Oct. 17, 2022. (Reuters/Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana)
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s the high-profile murder trial of police general Ferdy Sambo gets under way, calls for drastic measures to reform the National Police are mounting amid a series of controversies that have led to a crisis of confidence in the law-enforcement institution.
The former head of the police’s internal affairs division (Propam) stood trial at the South Jakarta District Court on Monday for the murder of his own aide-de-camp, Brig. Nofriansyah Yosua Hutabarat, whose death in July was initially made to look like the result of a shootout.
In the indictment read out in court, prosecutor Sugeng Hariadi accused Ferdy of putting a bullet through the back of Yosua’s head to ensure he was dead, as the victim was writhing in pain after being shot by an accomplice.
Ferdy’s lawyer declined to say how his client would plead, but insisted last week that Ferdy had ordered Yosua to be assaulted and not shot, Reuters reported.
The case has been cited by observers as one of the biggest scandals in the history of the police corps, with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo singling it out on Friday as the reason why the public had lost trust in the force.
“When the ‘FS’ incident happened, everything went sour and [public trust in the police] fell to its lowest point. Before that it was the highest compared with other law-enforcement institutions,” Jokowi told hundreds of high-ranking police officers at the State Palace on Friday, in a video issued a day later on the Presidential Secretariat Youtube channel.
