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Government owes justice to Zulfiqar Ali, family
Ali, who was from Pakistan, was wrongly sentenced for a crime he did not commit; one of many victims of unfair trials in Indonesia.
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A photograph of a detention center. (Shutterstock/File)
O
n May 31, at 3:20 p.m. Zulfiqar Ali drew his final breath, five months after he was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer in December 2017. The much-awaited clemency he was promised turned out to be empty. He died because the government failed to keep its promise.
Ali, 54, died leaving six children including one with autism and the youngest just 10 years old. His wife, Siti Rohani, is a housewife from Bogor, West Java. They married back in 2001, in the same mosque where his body was laid out for the pre-burial prayers. Ali, who was from Pakistan, was wrongly sentenced for a crime he did not commit; one of many victims of unfair trials in Indonesia.
On June 14, 2005, Ali, a former clothes seller, was sentenced to death by the Tangerang District Court under a fabricated case. His arrest until his trial bore much abuse of his rights as a suspect, including torture during investigation, resulting in permanent damage to his organs. Moreover, the only thing that connected him with the 300 grams of heroin with which he was charged was a statement from Gurdip Singh, the person arrested with the said heroin three months before Ali was even arrested in November 2004.
Singh, later sentenced to death on Feb. 7, 2005, had admitted both verbally and in a notarized statement that the heroin never belonged to Ali and that Ali was never involved. Singh revoked his statement in his testimony at Ali’s trial, confessing he had been forced to give such a statement following torture by police, who he said had promised him leniency if he testified that the heroin found on him belonged to Ali. Naturally, after hearing his death penalty, Singh revoked this statement and vouched for Ali’s innocence. Unfortunately the judges ignored this information.
