The first two people to go on trial for the death of soccer fan Haringga Sirla have both been sentenced to several years in prison, despite their lawyer’s pleas for alternative sentencing due to their underage status.
The Bandung District Court in the West Java capital yesterday afternoon handed a 3-year sentence to 16-year-old DN and a 3-and-a-half year sentence to 17-year-old SN after finding them both guilty of assault leading to murder in the killing of the 23-year-old supporter of Jakarta’s soccer team, Persija, last month.
DN and SN’s lawyer, Dadang Sukmawijaya, who earlier this week pleaded to the court to send the boys to religious boarding school for rehabilitation, said he, the boys and their families are still considering whether they will appeal the verdict.
“What they (SN and DN) did was spontaneous and [driven] by emotion. We are fighting for that. The kids also confessed to that, they didn’t deny it,” Dadang told reporters at the conclusion of the sentencing hearing yesterday, as quoted by Kumparan.
Fourteen people, including SN and DN, were named murder suspects in Haringga’s case, but only the two youngsters have gone on trial.
The case prosecutors initially argued that SN and DN committed murder under Article 170 of the KUHP (Criminal Code), which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, but more than halved that for their recommended sentence in accordance with juvenile justice practices.
According to the Bandung Police, 23-year-old soccer fan Haringga went to the West Java capital on Sept. 23 to watch his team, Persija, take on their traditional rivals Persib. Once in Bandung, he met up with his friend, a resident of the city, and went to the Gelora Bandung Lautan Api (GBLA) stadium.
Once there, the two crossed paths with a group of Persib fans who were doing a “sweeping” patrol around the stadium demanding that people show them their ID cards to make sure there were no Persija fans in the area. Haringga was the unfortunate Persija fan netted in that sweep.
Videos of the assault on Haringga went viral online. In one disturbing clip, Haringga is seen being savagely beaten to a bloody pulp by Persib supporters — several small children included — as they chant songs telling him to “go home”.
Since 2012, seven people from both sides of the Persija-Persib rivalry have been killed in violent attacks by rival supporters.
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