Indonesian Soldiers Admit Executing 26

In a landmark human rights trial, 13 soldiers admitted Tuesday that they dragged 26 injured student activists into a field and shot them to death in Aceh province, but they also argued that they should not be punished because they were following orders.

One defendant, Lt. Trijoko Adiwiyono, said that when he questioned the order to shoot the students in the field, he was slapped by his commander, Lt. Col. Sudjono.

“He might have shot me if I had rejected his order,” Adiwiyono testified. Sudjono remains at large.

The students were executed in July when 300 soldiers swept through Beutong Ateuh in western Aceh in an operation aimed at capturing Tengku Bantaqiah, a former political prisoner and preacher at a remote Islamic boarding school.

Bantaqiah, a prominent supporter of the separatist Free Aceh Movement, was killed along with 56 of his students--26 in the operation mentioned in Tuesday’s testimony and 30 slain earlier. Eleven soldiers and one civilian accused in the earlier killing said they acted in self-defense.

The prosecution is seeking murder convictions and the death penalty against the 25 defendants in the trial presided over by five military and civilian judges.

The 13 soldiers told of how they were ordered to take the students injured in the assault on their school to a field and execute them.

The unprecedented trial in Aceh was launched in April by Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid in a bid to reach out to the separatist forces in the northwestern Indonesian province, on the island of Sumatra.

The trial is regarded as a test of the new government’s resolve to rein in the military, accused of human rights abuses in Aceh under former President Suharto.

John Efendi, a radio operator who participated in the July raid, testified last week that the troops fired in self-defense. He said Bantaqiah’s followers attacked the troops “with knives and other sharp weapons.”

Also on Tuesday, police said five people were killed in Aceh. The bloodshed came three days before peace talks in Geneva.