A prosecutor asked the Tangerang District Court on Thursday (July 26) to sentence labor activist Ngadinah to a probation period for inciting other workers to join a strike.

Prosecutor Eka Widyastuti said that defendant Ngadinah should be sentenced to seven months in jail if she repeated the same offence within a year. The prosecutor said that the defendant had violated Article 335 of the Criminal Code on inciting others to commit" offensive or violent acts", which also inflicted losses to the company where she works: PT Panarub, a company that produces Adidas shoes.

Dressed in a blue long-sleeved shirt and beige slacks, Ngadinah listened intently to the sentence demand. She told presiding judge Achmad Zaini that she would prepare her plea in the next session on Aug. 6. She told The Jakarta Post outside the courtroom that her lawyers, Pardoman Simanjuntak and Lelly Gustinar, decided on July 3 to withdraw themselves from the case in protest over the court's rejection of their request to present expert witnesses: Harkristuti Harkrisnowo, criminal law expert of the Indonesian University and HP Raja Gukguk of the Indonesian Christian University. Ngadinah said that the judges later granted the request to allow Harkristuti to testify in the hearing early this month, but the two lawyers still refused to continue handling the case.

Commenting on the prosecutor's demand, Ngadinah, said it was the right of prosecutors to determine the length of the sentence demanded. "I am not shocked because I have seen from earlier sessions that all (legal) process is unfair," she said. Tangerang Police arrested Ngadinah, 28, who had worked for PT Panarub for five years, on April 23 following information provided by company human resource manager Slamet Supriyadi.

Supriyadi filed a complaint with the police that the defendant had forced other workers to join a massive strike between Sept. 8 and Sept. 11, 2000, causing the company Rp 500 million in losses during the four-day strike by 8,000 workers. After spending four weeks under police detention, Ngadinah was released on May 22 and was put under house arrest under guarantee of State Minister for the Environment Sony Keraff, Deputy Director of the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute Munir and Coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence Munarman. Earlier, police charged her with violating Article 160 of the Criminal Code for resisting authorities in public. However, the prosecutor then also charged her with violating Article 335.