Divers’ Case Dismissed in Indonesia

A court here Thursday dismissed charges against a group of foreign scuba divers, including three Southern Californians who escaped, who have been held for the past 10 weeks for trespassing in Indonesian waters.

Presiding Judge Munziri Syarkawish upheld objections by the defense counsel that the allegations constituted a defamation of the accused. Prosecutor Halius Hosen said he would consider appealing, and defense lawyer Gunawan Suryoputro said it could take a week for the passports of the accused to be returned.

“We won the first round. We’ll have to wait to see if it’s the last,” said 30-year-old Peter Howes, a former oil rig worker from Perth, Australia, who is the leader of the group of six Americans, three Australians and a Briton.

There were four empty seats in the courthouse. Four Californians, Patrick Gibson of Van Nuys; James Vorus, Santa Monica; Clifton Craft, Whittier, and Daniel Commerford, Orange, escaped last weekend after stealing a fishing boat. They crossed to Singapore and were given temporary travel documents to fly home. The whereabouts of Vorus are still uncertain, members of the group said.

Commerford said Thursday that the Indonesian authorities “didn’t have any evidence, they never did.”

“What happened is they (Indonesian authorities) saw the opportunity for an extortion move on a group of foreigners they felt they could get money from,” he said.

Commerford, Craft and Gibson are members of the California Wreck Divers Club, some of whose members face charges of defacing two historic shipwrecks, the Golden Horn in Santa Barbara County and the Winfield Scott in Ventura County. Craft currently faces such a charge stemming from a November, 1987, dive off Anacapa Island to explore the Winfield Scott, a Gold Rush-era steamship that ran aground in 1853.

But Commerford said there is a big difference between exploring wrecks for an old pipe or porthole cover and hunting for sunken gold or other treasure, which the Indonesian government contended that they were doing.

“Some people go out in the desert and collect rocks,” said Commerford, a building inspector in Orange. “We (wreck divers) recover and restore nautical artifacts that, if left on the sea bottom, would eventually deteriorate completely. . . . “

The two Americans who stayed behind, twins Bruce and Robert Lanham, from Pleasant Hill, Calif., said they will continue the hunger strike they began 10 days ago until they are set free. They were all detained at gunpoint on March 22 when their boat was escorted into Tanjung Pinang harbor, about 60 miles southeast of Singapore, by an Indonesian patrol vessel.