This Country Should Have A Special Justice Collaborator Detention Center

Illustration (Photo by Emiliano Bar on Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The need for a special detention center (remand center) for witnesses who work together with law enforcement (justice collaborators) is important to ensure protection.

"If there is no detention center yet (there is one). Well, the detention center needs to be held so that the justice collaborator or the perpetrator's witness is really in a neutral place, which is managed by the LPSK," said the Head of the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) Hasto Atmojo Suroyo after a working meeting with Commission III of the DPR at the Senayan Parliament Complex, in Jakarta, Monday 17 January.

According to him, a special detention center for justice collaborators is urgently needed to be built in order to avoid the possibility of a conflict of interest.

"If it's another detention center, it's managed by other law enforcement officers, we're worried there will be a conflict of interest," he said.

Hasto believes that the existence of a special detention center for justice collaborators is important. This is because the function and purpose are different from the safe house that has existed and is being managed by the LPSK.

"I think it's urgent. So like this, the LPSK has been managing safe houses, but safe houses are not for detainees, they are for witnesses or victims who are in danger, threatened," he added.

In addition to increasing the guarantee of protection, the existence of the special detention center can also be intended as a form of reward because someone is willing to become a justice collaborator.

Hasto also emphasized that the LPSK is obliged to provide protection to witnesses, victims, witness witnesses, reporters, and experts, as stipulated in Law Number 13 of 2006 concerning Witness and Victim Protection (Witness and Victim Protection Law).

LPSK is coordinating with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights (Kemenkumham) to establish a special detention center for justice collaborators.

"We ask for support from the DPR's Commission III so that the LPSK can organize a special detention center for perpetrator witnesses," he said

He considered the urgency of having a special detention center for justice collaborators increasingly urgent, reflecting on the experience of the LPSK providing protection to Richard Eliezer (Bharada E) as a justice collaborator who was involved in the murder case of Brigadier Nofriansyah Yosua Hutabarat (Brigadir J).

"We consider it quite urgent, the last experience with providing protection to Bharada E was what triggered us that we needed to manage a special detention center for this justice collaborator," said Hasto.