Police in South Tangerang say that Elih, a 73-year-old homeless woman from Serpong, South Tangerang, died as the result of a brutal act of gang violence that her suspected killers have said was accidental.
On Sunday evening, a group of men, riding 15 motorcycles, went to attack a base belonging to the paramilitary organization Pemuda Pancasila (Pancasila Youth).
“The old woman was a wrongfully targeted victim. The suspects were going to take out their anger on one of the organization’s members, and the old woman happened to be sleeping in the base at the time,” said South Tangerang Police Chief Fadli Widiyanto, as quoted by Kompas yesterday.
“When (the suspects) figured out that there was someone inside the base, they went in with machetes. Because it was dark, they didn’t see that the person they were attacking was not a member of Pancasila Youth, but an old woman.”
The suspects then went on to attack another Pancasila Youth base, but did not claim any more victims.
Elih’s dead body, with machete wounds all over, was found by locals the next day.
The police have arrested six suspects so far. They claimed that they did not know that they killed an old woman until they saw the news of her death the next day.
The suspects, who hailed from outside of the city, initially claimed that they were members of the Betawi Brotherhood Forum (FBR) organization. However, the police have denied this and have not disclosed the suspects’ motivation for attacking the Pemuda Pancasila base.
Though it’s not clear if there’s any relation to the attack, Pemuda Pancasila itself is a group with a notoriously violent history, having been used to run death squads for the Indonesian military during the communist massacres of 1965, in which approximately one million people were killed.
The suspects have been charged with premeditated murder, which could see them jailed for at least 20 years or receive the death penalty.
