On Deathbed, Suharto Avoids Answering for Crimes

Gilang was one of the last victims of former President Suharto’s harsh 32-year rule, a young activist who disappeared here on the day the former president was forced from power 10 years ago and whose body was found six days later, shot, stabbed and disemboweled.

As with many of Mr. Suharto’s victims, his killers have never been identified or brought to justice, escaping prosecution much as Mr. Suharto himself has done over the past decade.

Now, on what appears to be his deathbed, it seems Mr. Suharto will end his life — like Pol Pot in Cambodia — without having to answer for crimes on a monumental scale that include severe human rights abuses and prodigious corruption.