Indonesian football stampede trial opens with police, match organizer faces negligence charges

Plast Waldyo

SURABAYA, Indonesia (Reuters) – An Indonesian court on Monday upheld a handful of criminal negligence charges in connection with one of the world’s deadliest soccer stadium deaths in Java last October. The trial of the police and the organizer of the soccer match has started.

The disaster, which killed 135 people, occurred after a match at Kanjurhan Stadium in Malang, East Java, raising questions about safety measures and the use of tear gas. Tear gas is a crowd control measure prohibited by FIFA, football’s global governing body.

A court in Surabaya plans to indict five people, including three police officers, a security guard and the match organizer. If found guilty, he faces up to five years in prison.

Court spokesman Agung Pranata said the trial was being held by teleconference due to security concerns.

Indonesia’s Human Rights Commission conducted an investigation into the stampede last November and found that police fired 45 rounds of tear gas into the crowd at the end of the match, causing panic and leading to the stampede. concluded that the excessive and indiscriminate use of tear gas was the main trigger behind the deadly clashes.

The commission said locked doors, overcrowded stadiums and failure to properly implement safety procedures exacerbated the death toll.

A lawyer for the match organizer of Arema, one of the football clubs involved in the match, said his client denied all charges.

“If there was any fault, it was the police who fired the tear gas, not us,” lawyer Sudarman said.

Lawyers for the police and security guards at trial were not immediately available for comment.

After the incident, Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced that all soccer league matches would be suspended and that the Kanjurhan Stadium would be demolished and rebuilt.

The league has since resumed in the Southeast Asian country, but without spectators.

(Reporting by Prasto Wardoyo; additional reporting by Ananda Teresia from Jakarta; writing by Kate Lamb; editing by Kenneth Maxwell)