Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Court case hangs over Indonesian pastor

The legal case against Palti Panjaitan, who runs the HKBP Filadelfia church in the village of Jejalen Jaya, east of Bekasi, Indonesia, continues to drag on.

Panjaitan was accused by an Islamic leader of assaulting him on Christmas Eve of last year. The pastor has always maintained that he did not assault Abdul Aziz Bin Naimun and was in fact the subject of intimidation and death threats by his accuser.

However, the case goes on and the pastor was deemed too psychologically fragile to attend his latest hearing last month. The Asian Human Rights Commission wrote a letter to the Indonesian national police on August 22 imploring them to drop all charges against the pastor and questioning the logic of the local police.

“With no evidence to support the case against Rev. Panjaitan, we are questioning the legal and moral reasoning of your officers at Bekasi District Police in being so persistent in this case,” AHRC wrote.

This position was seconded by Panjaitan’s lawyer, Thomas Tampubolon, who said at a July 29 press conference that there was no case to answer.

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