Syamsul Bahri and Samsir, father and son from a farmer community in North Sumatra, are now free from risk of imprisonment. An appellate court in the province upheld a lower court’s decision to sentence the men to two months suspended prison sentence with four months’ probation on charges of assault, meaning they will not be imprisoned unless they commit criminal offense within their probation period. Arrested on what is thought to be spurious charges, it is believed that the men have been targeted for their work as environmental human rights defenders and should therefore never have been convicted in the first place.
