February 10, 06:29 PM 
514 Chai Chee Lane 03-16, Singapore 469029 So far, it has been more or less confirmed that Indonesia will be going ahead with naming one of its naval vessels the "KRI Usman Harun".
"Usman" and "Harun" are the names of the two Indonesian marines, Osman Mohamed Ali, 25, and Harun Said, 21, who were charged with the 1965 MacDonald House bombing in Singapore, and subsequently, hanged in Changi jail in 1968.
They were later conferred national hero status posthumously by Indonesia and given a full military funeral in South Jakarta.
Well, some interesting background stories have re-surface online.
For example:
- Three days after the bombing, the two marines were found floating out at sea, rescued and arrested
- In their initial police statements, one marine claimed he was a farmer and the other claimed he was a fisherman, before coming clean about the bombing
- At the trial, both Osman and Harun then asserted that they were both members of the Indonesian armed forces and that they were entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention
- But when the judge refused to confer them with prisoner of war (POW) status, both men retracted their statement and said they were at sea on March 13, three days about the bombing, because their sampan had sunk while they were on their way to a place in Singapore to collect a boat
And in case you're wondering, no, none of these is new information.
These fascinating facts have reappeared in this blog post put up by one Andrew Wan on Feb. 10, 2014, because of the current tension between Singapore and Indonesia regarding this naming-a-boat-after-terrorists issue.
The original details of the trial of the Indonesian marines comes from the statement of the Public Prosecutor at their trial, from the records of the Centre for International and European Law.
Top photo from here
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