Torched by Savage Cops

It was a tense bottle of beer. The five friendsKuswanto, Susanto, Suprat, Soleh and Mukiyiwere sitting at the Kafe Perdana on the ring road in Kudus, Central Java, their usual hangout spot. "To, you get out of here," one of them said, trying to persuade Kuswanto to leave.

Kuswanto, 29, shook his head. He had been receiving phone calls and text messages from his friends for a week. They wanted him to flee because the police intended to arrest him. According to his associates, the police suspected that Kuswanto was part of a gang of robbers that had stolen from an ice cream warehouse. On the night of November 15, 2012, six days before the friends shared their beer, the warehouse had been robbed by a gang of thieves.

Before they finished the bottle, a group of plainclothes police officers appeared and approached Kuswanto and his friends. "Oh, Pak Joko," said Kuswanto. As an informant who often gave information to the police, Kuswanto recognized one of the officers. This time, however, the cop was far from friendly. "Come on. Follow me," he said. He grabbed Kuswanto's shoulder and dragged him to a Daihatsu Xenia car parked in front of the caf. His four friends were put in two other cars. "I counted 13 of them," Kuswanto told Tempo last week.

December 16, 2014