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Yogyakarta. An appeals court has overturned a criminal conviction against a Garuda Indonesia pilot who captained a plane that crashed in 2007, killing 21 people, a court official said on Friday.

The Yogyakarta High Court ruled that the charges against pilot Marwoto Komar should be dropped due to a lack of evidence, said Suratno, the spokesman of the Sleman District Court, which heard the original case. He said his office was “just waiting for the official letter.”

Marwoto’s lawyer, Muchtar Zuhdy, said the High Court had reached the verdict in September, but a copy of it was only just received.
The pilot was sentenced to two years in jail by the Yogyakarta district court in April this year after he was found guilty of negligence.

A National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) investigation found that Marwoto had ignored a series of warnings upon landing, but according to the aviation law its findings could not be used in court.

The ill-fated Boeing 737 was carrying 140 passengers from Jakarta in March 2007 to Yogyakarta’s Adisucipto Airport, where it landed at high speed and hit an embankment at the end of the runway before catching fire.

Five Australian diplomats and journalists who were covering a visit by then-Foreign Minister Alexander Downer were among the fatalities.

Marwoto’s conviction sparked controversy in Indonesia as it was the first time a pilot had been brought up on criminal charges over an accident. A group of pilots, aviation engineers and air traffic controllers threatened to go on strike in April, fearing their jobs might be at stake following Marwoto’s guilty verdict.

Adrie Gunawan, the chairman of the Indonesia Air Traffic Controllers Association (IATCA), said in March that 26 air traffic controllers in Indonesia had taken leave to find jobs in other countries since they felt vulnerable to prosecution here.

Manotar Napitupulu, president of the Indonesian Pilots Association, welcomed the appeals court ruling, saying Marwoto should not have been put on trial in the first place.

“This shows that the justice system has finally understood that Marwoto’s case did not belong in court,” he said.

Manotar argued that pilots should be tried separately by the Civil Servant Investigators office and by the ethics council. “However, I thank the court for respecting Marwoto’s rights as a pilot,” he said.

A new law has since mandated the establishment of an aviation professionals council, with its main task monitoring and evaluating air transport workers.

The council will be composed of officials from the Transportation Ministry, civil aviation experts, the KNKT and the police.