Indonesia stadium disaster: six face criminal charges over deadly crush

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Six people, including police and match organisers, are facing criminal charges in Indonesia after a crowd crush at a football game killed at least 131 people at the weekend.

Saturday’s tragedy in the Malang region of East Java was among the worst sporting disasters ever, as hundreds of fans tried to flee a riot in the stadium and teargas being fired by police, leading to a crush worsened by several locked exits.

Police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo told a news conference that the suspects include the administrator of the country’s top professional football division, who is responsible for ensuring that stadiums have proper operating certificates. He said the stadium in Malang city did not meet the requirements for certification and had not been properly verified.

Also facing charges are three police officers over their use of teargas, the head of the organising committee and the chief security officer of the home club, Arema FC.

They are charged with criminal negligence causing death, which carries a maximum five-year prison sentence if found guilty.

Police said the club’s officials had not complied with safety requirements and had allowed a crowd larger than the stadium’s capacity, while stewards had abandoned exits.

Police have said the exits that people fled to were too narrow to pass through, while the country’s football association said some exits were locked.

According to recommendations by football’s international governing body FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation, exits at stadiums must be unlocked at all times during a game for safety purposes. Those rules don’t necessarily apply to domestic or national leagues. FIFA has also advised against the use of teargas in stadiums as a crowd control measure.

The government has created a fact-finding team to look into the disaster, which is one of the deadliest football-related tragedies since a crush in Peru in 1964 killed more than 300.

President Joko Widodo has also ordered an audit of stadiums across the country to make sure their security was up to code, adding that “locked doors and steep stairs” were key factors in the incident.