An Indonesian court has acquitted a former government official of human trafficking charges after people were found in cages near his palm oil plantation, a decision rights activists say the local man is running on. testimony to the impunity of state actors.
Prosecutors vowed to appeal Monday’s ruling by North Sumatra court judges that former Terbit Rencana Perangin Angin district official was not charged with human trafficking, torture, forced labor and slavery. The macabre scandal in the world’s largest producer of palm oil first appeared in 2022 when police investigating a government official for corruption found people arrested in his room.
A police investigation found that 665 people had been arrested in prisons with metal bars on their property since 2010, according to court documents. The release is unfair, said Anis Hidayah of the Indonesian Human Rights Commission.
The decision shows impunity where one of the perpetrators is a state actor, he said. It also harms the concept of justice.
Prosecutors will appeal, said Yos A Tarigan, spokesman for the province’s attorney general’s office.
Terbit’s attorney could not immediately be reached, but speaking in court on Monday, he thanked the judges who acquitted him, media reports said.
The former regional leader, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for corruption in 2022, said at first that those arrested were participating in drug rehabilitation programs. But prosecutors said they were tortured and forced to work in his fields, and court documents show that three of them died there.
An environmental research group, the Gecko Project, later discovered that the plant had brought palm oil to mainstream markets around the world. In 2022, eight people were convicted of murder and intentional violence in connection with the case and sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison, according to state media.
