The petitioners challenged articles 9(1), 43(3), and 127 of the law, which allow active duty military personnel to be tried in military courts even for crimes ordinarily prosecuted in civilian courts. The Constitutional Court found that the distinction between military offenses and ordinary criminal offenses must be clearly defined. Justice Enny Nurbaningsih said that when an offense has no military character but accountability for it remains within a command-based system, “there is a structural risk that military’s institutional interests will conflict with the need to ensure independent and impartial legal proceedings.”
The Constitutional Court also noted that the military judiciary is not fully integrated into the judicial system overseen by the Supreme Court and urged lawmakers to create a single system. Military judges are active duty soldiers, and investigation, prosecution, and adjudication all take place within the military chain-of-command.
Revisions to the Military Justice Law have been pending for decades. As part of structural reforms that followed the end of authoritarian rule under President Soeharto from 1965 to 1998, the 2004 Armed Forces Law made soldiers subject to civilian courts for ordinary crimes. However, that provision would only take effect when a new military justice law was enacted. The Constitutional Court’s ruling imposes a two-year time frame for those revisions, which successive Indonesian governments have deferred.
The court's 568-page decision can be found here.
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