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Garuda pilot 'should be jailed for four years'


THE pilot at the controls when a Garuda plane crashed in Yogyakarta killing 21 people, including five Australians, should be jailed for four years for causing the accident through criminal negligence, prosecutors have told a panel of judges.The sentence request angered Captain Marwoto Komar's lawyers but was far less than the jail term prosecutors could have asked for if they had decided he had deliberately caused the crash on March 7, 2007. "The air at the time was clear, the runway was clear and no other plane was about to take off," prosecutors told Sleman District Court in Yogyakarta. "The defendant was not careful enough . [and] is legally and convincingly proven to have caused the death of 21 people and left 32 others with serious injuries."Yesterday the court heard that on approach the plane was travelling at 240 knots, about twice the speed recommended for a safe landing. It also tried to land from 5000 feet, rather than the appropriate height of 4000 feet.Despite being told twice by his co-pilot, Gagam Rohmana, to abort the landing and "go around", Komar ignored the warnings.

Earlier, the court was told he also ignored more than a dozen automated warnings, including blaring sirens in the cockpit, before the crash.Komar has insisted the crash was due to sudden turbulence. The court has heard evidence from air traffic controllers and meteorologists that there was no weather event detected to back the pilot's claim.In his testimony last year, the co-pilot confirmed he had urged Komar to abandon the landing and try again. But, in sometimes contradictory evidence, he also said he blacked out before the accident, citing turbulence.The crash caused an outpouring of emotion and concern in Australia, not least because it was the latest in a series of plane crashes in Indonesia. There have been no big accidents since but prosecutors have taken the unusual step of prosecuting Komar under the penal code, rather than its air transport laws.His lawyers maintain it is improper for their client to be charged as a criminal under the penal code. "The prosecutors' spirit was only to punish the defendant," said Mohammad Assegaf, the main defence lawyer. "The article [in the penal code] was aimed at terrorists not at airplane crew. Besides, when a Garuda plane crashed down in the Bengawan Solo river in 2003, which caused one death and the plane was broken, why wasn't the pilot taken to the court - and he is still flying until today?"The Australians killed were an AusAID official, Allison Sudradjat; the diplomat Liz O'Neill; federal police officers Brice Steele and Mark Scott, and the Australian Financial Review journalist Morgan Mellish. They were following the then foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, on a visit to Indonesia.

Mr Downer had earlier taken a government business jet to Yogyakarta, which was too small to fit the entourage.If the judges agree with the prosecutors, Komar will serve less than four years in jail because the three months he has already spent in prison will be deducted from the sentence. The trial continues on March 10.

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