Military officers behind acid attack on Indonesian activist sentenced to jail

Four military intelligence officers have been sentenced to up to three years in jail, after they threw sulphuric acid over a human rights activist in a brazen attack in Central Jakarta.

Warning: This story contains details of an assault.

CCTV captured the assault on Andrie Yunus, 27, with two of the officers throwing acid on him while he was riding his motorcycle home late at night in March.

The footage showed Andrie dropping his bike and screaming as he clawed at his clothes while onlookers ran to help.

Andrie, who has been a vocal critic of the military's growing influence in Indonesia, is still recovering in hospital after receiving second- and third-degree burns across a quarter of his body.

Four officers — Second Sergeant Edi Sudarko, First Lieutenant Budhi Hariyanto Widhi Cahyono, Captain Nandala Dwi Prasetya and First Lieutenant Sami Lakka — were found guilty of premeditated assault resulting in serious injury.

It was the lesser of the three charges brought against them.

Each of the officers received separate sentences for their role in the incident: three years, 2.5 years, two years and 1.5 years respectively.

The two officers who threw the acid on Andrie have been dishonourably discharged from the military.

Impact of the case

Prosecutors told the court they believed the officers did not intend to cause permanent injury to Andrie.

Prosecutors and the judges also took a swipe at Andrie for not participating in the trial.

A witness protection agency gave a report to the court that Andrie was not medically fit to participate.

Andrie's legal team, the Advocacy Team for Democracy (TAUD), said the activist had still been recovering from surgeries and severe burns when military prosecutors wanted to see him in hospital.

The team also effectively boycotted the military court process, describing it as a "sham".

Judges said they took Andrie's behaviour into account in sentencing.

"[Andrie] has not only neglected his legal obligations, but has acted to the prejudice of the trial process," chief judge Colonel Fredy Ferdian Isnartanto said.

"By casting a negative stigma and demonstrating a complete lack of confidence in the military justice system, his conduct amounts to an abuse of the lawful processes established by the state.

"The panel finds that Mr Andrie Yunus's attitude has undermined the authority of the court."

The military court judges have ordered that key evidence be destroyed.

They also ordered the destruction of a USB drive with the CCTV footage, a used car battery and a bottle of rust remover used to source the acid, and the tumbler that held the acid.

"In order to prevent the evidence from being reused for undesirable purposes, said pieces of evidence are confiscated to be destroyed so that they cannot be used again," the judgement read.

The court heard the men carried out the attack because of a grudge they held against Andrie for his role in crashing a closed-door meeting of politicians at a hotel in March 2025.

Prosecutors said the four men admitted to the crime after two of them skipped a mandatory roll call, concealing burns they suffered when some of the acid splashed back at them.

Andrie works as the deputy head of human rights GO, KontraS — the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence.

Its coordinator, Dimas Bagus Arya, said his colleague had become a "victim of violence from the very institution that he wanted to improve".

Civil society organisations have been critical of the military handling the case, given it involved officers attacking a civilian who had been vocal about the military's growing influence.

In a statement, Amnesty International Indonesia's executive director Usman Hamid said the verdict and sentencing "downplays the severity and impact of the life-threatening attack on Andrie".

"It fails to duly consider the involvement of other actors, or the chain of command, despite independent investigations recently [alleging] that at least 14 individuals had been involved," he said.

"The verdict protects the institutional integrity of the military and shields the full chain of command and other actors potentially linked to this incident from scrutiny."

Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai has previously told the ABC the government had demanded a transparent and objective trial in Andrie's case.

"The president has emphasised that this attack is an act of terror against civilians, particularly human rights defenders, and has urged authorities to seriously uncover the masterminds and their motives," he said.

A court recently ordered police to continue investigating the attack.