Witness, 90, Denies Keeping Indonesians as Slaves

A 90-year-old woman denied in Los Angeles federal court Thursday that she mistreated or imprisoned several immigrants from Indonesia who were brought here to work as servants in her Wilshire-area home.

“How could I?” Toba Mussry Solomon asked through an Indonesian interpreter. “I treated . . . (them) as if they were my own (children).”

The frail Indonesian-born woman was called by the defense to testify at the trial of two of her children--Nasim Mussry, 57, of Beverly Hills, and Elsa Singman, 54, of Los Angeles--who are accused of being part of a ring that illegally brought Indonesians into this country and allegedly sold them into involuntary servitude for as much as $3,000.

Although Solomon is not charged in the case, prosecutors allege that much of the mistreatment took place at the elderly woman’s three-bedroom home in 1979 and ’80.

In court, she rebutted the testimony of one Indonesian woman, Ni Putu Kartini, 29, who claimed that she was forced to steal food at night because Solomon did not give her enough to eat.

“She never stole any food,” Solomon testified. “There was always enough food. Sometimes, we had to throw some of it away. And I told her, ‘(If) you don’t like the (U.S.-style) food, you can cook your own food.’ ”

Solomon also denied government assertions that the servants were told they could never return to Indonesia.

“I never told them that,” she said, adding that the immigrants’ passports and visas were in an “open drawer” in a desk that the servants had access to.

Solomon was aided by several of her 13 children as she walked into the courtroom to testify, and Singman broke down in tears at the sight of her.

Mussry and Singman are among 10 people indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles in 1982, after FBI agents took into custody 30 Indonesians who, authorities allege, were being held as slaves and were working as servants.

Two of those indicted, David Mussry, a brother of the defendants, and Mordecai Sassoon, are still fugitives, prosecutors said. Five others pleaded guilty to reduced charges and were placed on probation. Charges against a 10th individual were dropped.