0 Singaporean Jailed 12 Years for Starting Batam Fire

Singaporean Kerri Kassan, 54, has been jailed for 12 years by the Batam district court for intentionally starting a neighborhood fire that killed a nine-year-old child and burned down 44 homes. "The accused's actions sparked an extraordinary blaze with a sizable amount of damage and caused the loss of a life," said presiding judge Reno Listowo, as he handed down the sentence on Wednesday. Prosecutors had pressed for 10 years in jail for Kerri for arson that endangered life, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in jail. 

He has seven days to file an appeal. He appeared in a relaxed mood on Wednesday when he told reporters he had not yet decided whether to do so. Kerri, a construction worker, set fire to two pairs of rubber footwear belonging to Saliati, his Indonesian wife of five years, last August over a domestic tiff. The early morning fire spread across the crowded residential area of Kampung Seraya in Batam, displacing 364 individuals and causing some 1.5 billion rupiah ($155,200) in damage, the court heard last month. 

The hearing was attended by the family members of the dead victim and those who had lost their homes. Prosecutor Rizky Rahmatullah said the sentence was more than what his team had demanded, and that it was sufficiently just, since Kerri had been proven to have started the fire deliberately. During the trial, which lasted several days over the past month, Kerri admitted to burning his wife's clothes and footwear out of anger that she appeared to have been with another man. But he said he did not think the fire would spread so ferociously. 

He also turned himself in to the police. Kerri and Saliati, who is from Palembang, in Sumatra island, met five years ago in Singapore when she was buying secondhand goods to sell in Batam. He is divorced from a Singaporean, with whom he has a 27-year-old son. Rosmawati, the mother of nine-year-old Stella Hitipeaw who died in the blaze, told reporters on Wednesday that she was disappointed with the verdict. "I had hoped he would receive the most severe punishment, even the life sentence which police mentioned when investigating the case," she said. 

Earlier, neighborhood chief Yance Silap told The Straits Times that many of the affected families in Kampung Seraya — where poor families have lived for decades on state land without having a legal land certificate — had chosen to move on with their lives. Some 25 of the 44 houses razed in the August fire have been rebuilt by the residents. Many of them were partitioned, with sections rented to other families. The Batam government has donated 92 million rupiah to the victims' families.

Reprinted courtesy of The Straits Times
source : the jakarta globe