TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko Widodo should have the courage to impose a moratorium on the death penalty. With our legal system in chaos, there is a high probability that the wrong people can be victimized.
The case of Zulfiqar Ali is an example of the dangers of the death penalty. The Pakistani citizen was almost executed by firing squad on July 29 along with narcotics boss Freddy Budiman and his associates. But Zulfiqar was neither a courier nor a drug dealer. In 2004, he was arrested merely because he was a friend of Gurdip Singh and bought a Jakarta-Surabaya plane ticket. The official statement from Patrialis Akbar, the justice and human rights minister during the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, that Zulfiqar was innocent, counted for nothing.
Our sense of justice finds outrageous the fact that law enforcement authorities from both the Yudhoyono and Jokowi administrations could behave so rashly in the Zulfiqar case. The textile trader from Tanah Abang, Jakarta, was arrested three months after Gurdip was detained in August 2004 in possession of 300 grams of heroin on a flight to Surabaya. Following torture at the hands of the police, Gurdip said he had obtained the heroin from Zulfiqar. It was Gurdip's confession that led to Zulfiqar being jailed. There was not a shred of evidence to back the charge.
At the beginning of the trial, because he had no legal adviser, Zulfiqar was unable to uncover the machinations of the case he had been dragged into. Eventually, the Supreme Court sentenced him to death. Even when a review of the case was requested, the judges closed their eyes to the facts. Gurdip's testimony before a notary, in which he stated the heroin had not come from Zulfiqar, was simply ignored.
The judges also paid no attention to the results of an investigation by a team set up by Minister Patrialis Akbar in September 2010, despite the unambiguous nature of the minister's conclusion that Zulfiqar had never in his whole life been involved with drugs. The case was contrived and rife with human rights violation.
This arbitrary verdict that nearly led to the death of Zulfiqar then came into the public spotlight. Indonesia's third president, B.J. Habibie, wrote to President Jokowi, and the Pakistani government has just asked Indonesia to quash the verdict.
Jokowi should take the courageous step of pushing for the end of the death penalty. If executions are supposed to have a deterrent effect, the facts show that the number of criminals continues to rise. Many drug distributors have faced the firing squad but their numbers continue to grow. People are not afraid of the death penalty.
The serious problem is that the death penalty has often been imposed on the wrong people. Meanwhile, our legal system is in a state of chaos, with some court and law enforcement officials readily taking bribes. Besides Zulfiqar, there are a number of other similar cases. These were uncovered by the Freddy Budiman fact-finding team, which discovered that the government had wrongly passed the death penalty on the Teja case.
Teja, who knew nothing about drugs, was caught after Freddy asked him to meet a man called Rudi. When the case involving the possession of 1.4 million ecstasy pills came to light, Teja was caught up in it. Initially, he was only a witness, but then became a suspect, and was eventually sentenced to death.
President Jokowi must realize that there is much uncertainty related to the death penalty. Hence, it should not be applied. Humans have no right to play god, especially if the death penalty in drugs cases is only used as a political campaign tool for the purpose of seeking popularity. (*)
Read the full story in this week's edition of Tempo English Magazine
