Their innocence was proven by the Supreme Court, which overruled the previous verdict by the district court and acquitted Fikri and his friends — Fatahillah, Arga Putra Samosir, Bagus Firdaus, Andro Suprianto and Nurdin Prianto stating that they were victims of wrongful accusations by the police.

Recently, with the help of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), they filed a lawsuit with the South Jakarta District Court seeking rehabilitation of their names and damages from the police and the Jakarta High Court.

The saga began when the six teenagers helped an 18-year-old street busker named Dicky Maulana, whom they found dying under a bridge in Cipulir, South Jakarta, in July 2013. He later died, apparently from excessive bleeding.

They told the court that initially the police asked them to be witnesses in the case but later they were named suspects.

“The police begged us to be their witnesses. They even promised us money for our favor. But then they coerced us into confessing that we had killed the man, whom in fact we didn’t even know,” said Fikri, who is now 22 years old.

He said police had resorted to intimidation and violence to extract confessions in the course of interrogations that ran for a week.

Fikri had repeatedly told the police the busker was already bleeding when they found him. They also gave him food and water before he died. However, the police still did not believe the youngsters’ statements.

“My testicles were electrocuted. They stopped only after we did what they wanted us to do,” said Fikri, who was 16 years old at the time.

He said his friends received the same cruel treatment.

In October 2013, the district court handed him a four-year prison term. Fatahillah, Arga and Bagus received three years each while Andro and Nurdin got seven years each. Just like Fikri, they were also minors.

Andro and Nurdin appealed, and the high court annulled their guilty verdicts in 2014. The judges ruled that police had insufficient evidence and ordered them to pay Andro and Nurdin Rp 36 million (US$2,500) in damages.

Two years later, the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of the rest of the convicts on similar grounds.

On Wednesday, accompanied by LBH Jakarta lawyers, Fikri, Fatahillah, Arga and Bagus appeared at the South Jakarta District Court, seeking Rp 750 million in damages from the Jakarta Police, Attorney General’s Office and the Finance Ministry.

“Our clients could not attend school. Before being jailed, they had earned a living as street buskers,” legal representative from LBH Jakarta Oky Wiratama Siagian said.

“Our clients were tortured while undergoing police interrogations.”

On top of the financial compensation, the former prisoners also demanded an apology that the Jakarta Police and Attorney General should make public through newspapers and online media for their false accusations.

The false charges case was only one out of 13 that LBH Jakarta has handled over the past year. Use of torture during police questioning reportedly remains rampant in Indonesia, Oky said.

Fikri, who has moved to Tegal, Central Java, said he was still traumatized by what he experienced in police custody.

Responding to the lawsuit, the Jakarta Police refuted claims that they had committed any wrongdoing in handling the case.

Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Cmr. Argo Yuwono said the police handled the questioning and investigation process professionally. He argued that at that time, investigators had obtained two pieces of evidence sufficient to name them suspects.

“The police had conducted questioning and investigation into the case where we found formal and material evidence. The dossiers were also declared complete by the prosecutors,” he said on Thursday as quoted by kompas.com. (das)

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