Indonesia police: Stadium exit gates too small for escape
Indonesian police say the exit gates at the Jakarta Arena were not big enough to accommodate anyone fleeing the stadium during a match between two Indonesian professional football clubs last month.
One policeman said the exit gates were not wide enough to allow a person to escape from the stadium with a backpack. Another said the gates were so narrow there was danger of a bomb attack.
Police told The Associated Press that police officers on motorcycles surrounded the stadium, looking for suspicious people who were hiding in the crowd. They stopped and asked people where they were going.
One of the officers told the AP that police then approached the suspects.
But when police pointed the suspects to police vehicles, they said, there was no one in them.
Police had detained at least 45 people for questioning after the match and a crowd of hundreds of spectators watched.
The stadium’s gate was so small, police suspected a bomb was hidden in a person’s luggage.
The Associated Press obtained the police report under a Freedom of Information Act request and used a photo of the gate to illustrate the problem, drawing on an online photo of the entry.
In the report, which also refers to video footage, police said: “The gate is not big enough to allow the escape of passengers from the stadium without causing risks to public safety.”
“By entering the stadium through this exit gate, the victims have risked their lives and those of others,” the report says.
The report said police were still searching for the suspect who had left the stadium in a light-colored car with two people who were not identified in the report.
The police report says the man had left the stadium grounds “after seeing some suspicious movements in the crowd.”
The stadium has been a target of terrorist attacks in recent years, including the bombing of the Indonesian resort island of Bali in 2002 and the killing of three people in separate incidents in Jakarta.
Ikrima, the deputy head of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee, one of six bodies responsible for coordinating the investigation into the Bali bombings, told the AP he was not concerned about the report’s contents.
“The first thing I would