NEIL AND FERDI TRIAL
I can’t laugh at how the trial took place behind closed doors, nor do I find humour in how the defendants were barred from making statements to the press. We’re talking about separating two unambiguously innocent men from their families for ten years. Those who claim that the supposed rapes took place in a room with glass walls, during school hours, and in a crowded school of 2400 students seem to have a great deal in common with the villager who claimed that he’d been transformed into a newt by a witch, and who, when confronted, attests to having “got better.” On that note, why not add witchcraft to the charges? I think we can all agree that the accused men needed sorcery to pull that one off undetected.īut this case is no comedy.
When I hear that “magic stones” were part of the testimony of a key witness (frighteningly, one with a PhD), I can’t help it when the iconic witch trial of Monty Python and the Holy Grail comes to mind. The case put forth might be more at home in a crude comedy than a real-life courtroom. In spite of near-universal opprobrium, in spite of a myriad of evidence to the contrary, and in spite of common sense, Neil Bantleman and Ferdinant Tjiong are to spend the next decade in an Indonesian prison.
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