An Indonesia store owner and his employee have been freed by authorities after being detained for selling Kreator t-shirts.
Kebayoran Baru Police arrested Mahdi Ismed and Yosvita at the weekend for stocking the German outfit’s merchandise featuring the hammer and sickle logo.
The symbol, which was conceived during the 1917 Russian Revolution, was adopted by the now defunct Indonesian Communist Party – and the pair faced charges of treason for selling the t-shirts.
However, the Jakarta Post report the two men will face no charges after being questioned.
Kebayoran Baru Police chief Ary Purwanto says: “From our investigation, the sellers sold the t-shirts purely for business purpose. We won’t detain them further.”
Ismed and Yosvita say they downloaded the image of the cover of Kreator album At The Pulse of Kapitulation: Live In East Berlin 1990 simply because they liked the design and printed it on the t-shirts.
“We did not focus on the picture but on the band, which is Kreator,” says Yosvita. “We never thought that it would cause a problem.”
The pair are reported to have sold 50 of the shirts from their Blok M store in south Jakarta.
