Addicts went for treatment. Instead, they were enslaved.

Indonesia’s anti-corruption investigators went on a hunt for the powerful local official after catching two of his aides taking a $40,000 bribe.

Their six-month investigation led them to a vast estate in North Sumatra, where they made a shocking discovery: 65 men locked in two cages.

The prisoners, investigators found, had been imprisoned under the guise of a drug rehabilitation program and forced to work as slaves on a palm plantation and palm oil mill owned by the official, Terbit Rencana Perangin-angin, and his family.

Dozens of victims told authorities they were not receiving treatment for their addiction.

“This was not rehab. This was the prison,” says a former prisoner who visits Bambang and has assisted two government investigations. “They treated us like animals. We were just hopeless there.”

The corruption investigators arrested Mr Perangin-angin, 50, on bribery charges in January 2022, days after the cages were discovered. He was tried and convicted of bribery in Jakarta, the capital, and sentenced to seven and a half years in October. The police seized his factory and he was stripped of his elected post as regent, similar to the leader of a county in the United States.

But Mr. Perangin-angin has not been charged or tried for any charges related to the men found caged on his property.

The case highlights Indonesia’s abysmal human rights record and rampant corruption that flourishes at the regional level, where governors, regents and mayors of major cities are often referred to as “little kings”.

An investigation by the North Sumatra Provincial Police found that 656 men and teenage boys were caged on Mr. Perangin-angin had been incarcerated for the decade before his arrest. They were usually held for about 18 months before being released.

Most of the victims were forced to work in the factory or on the plantation, often alongside paid workers. Many were tortured, flogged, burned and sexually abused. Six detainees died, including at least three who were tortured to death, according to Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission.

Former inmates also cleaned Mr. Perangin-angin’s mansion, washed his vehicles, and fed his 200 cows. The prisoners were easily identified by their close-cropped hair.

“The regent didn’t want to spend money to hire workers so they enslaved us by using rehab as an excuse,” says Ardi, 18, who was jailed at 15 and ordered to sweep floors in the regent’s mansion. “But they never treated us. It was actually a scam.”

Ardi is one of four victims under witness protection who agreed to speak to The New York Times on the condition that they not be named by their full names for fear of retaliation.

Although the cages were an open secret in the community, local police and officials never intervened because Mr. Perangin-angin was seen as omnipotent in Langkat Regency, the jurisdiction where the cages were found. Some police officers and soldiers even helped guard or torture the men, victims and the authorities.

“Nobody could stop him,” said Rianto Wicaksono, an agent with Indonesia’s Victims and Witness Protection Agency, an independent government agency that protects victims and witnesses of crime. “Police in the area were under his command. No one was brave enough to go against him.”

While Mr Perangin-angin has so far avoided charges in the slavery case, 13 of the approximately 60 men identified by the victims have been prosecuted for their role in the operation.

Victims who testified about their abuse say they are frustrated by the leniency shown by the police and courts. None of the defendants has faced more than one charge, and the longest sentence handed down was three years.

A military court convicted five soldiers of torturing prisoners and sentenced them to a year or less. Five police officers – including Mr. Perangin-angin’s brother-in-law – were demoted but not charged.

The son of Mr. Perangin-angin, Dewa Rencana Perangin-angin, 25, was convicted in November of torturing a man to death and sentenced to 19 months. Mr. Perangin-angin has denied knowing anything about the operation. He and his son did not respond to interview requests or written questions submitted through their attorney.

The pursuit of prosecution was led by the Witness Protection Agency and the national human rights organization Kontras, both of which conducted their own investigations and urged police to do more. The Witness Protection Bureau estimated that Mr. Perangin-angin earned $12 million from the prisoners’ unpaid labor.

“It is no surprise that the legal process would go smoothly for all perpetrators,” said Rahmat Muhammad, Kontras’ director for North Sumatra. “It’s because the regent is rich and has a powerful network.”

As the highest elected official of the Langkat Regency, Mr. Perangin-angin gets his will through violence, intimidation and political connections. He ran the locally dominant political party, as well as a politically influential youth organization known for extortion. Relatives held key positions, including his sister, the speaker of the Regency Parliament.

All four victims interviewed by The Times have testified against the handful of perpetrators brought to justice. The witnesses say they fear for their safety when they see men walking around who guarded and tortured them.

Mr. Perangin-angin’s walled estate stands among the small open-air shops and single-storey houses along the main road of Raja Tengah, a small village in Langkat Regency.

Illegal drugs, especially meth, plague the region. Many families welcomed the offer of free drug treatment at the estate, enrolling their children and exempting the program from responsibility for death or injury.

Despite the program’s reputation for harsh treatment, many in the community supported the effort to get addicts off the streets. Mr. Perangin-angin publicly promoted the drug rehabilitation program in speeches and on a government YouTube channel.

The two cages, built by inmates in 2016 to replace an earlier cage, stand side by side, half-hidden on the edge of the palm plantation. With bars like a prison, each cell had one primitive toilet for 30 men or more.

Men caught after escaping were brutally punished. Roni, 25, said a guard lit his pubic hair with a match and burned the tip of his penis with a cigarette after he was recaptured.

The guard then ordered Roni and another escapee to sodomize each other. He said they simulated the act while the guard recorded a video. Roni said he gave police the names of the guard and 10 others, but no one has been arrested.

Since then, he has seen the guard several times in the village.

Sangap Surbakti, a lawyer who previously represented Mr Perangin-angin, said his client knew about the cages because he sometimes went swimming in the area, but was unaware that men were imprisoned, tortured and forced to properties to work.

“He was just unlucky because the cages were close to his house,” said the lawyer. “He knew about the cages, but he didn’t know what was happening there.”

Mr Surbakti said the existence of the cages was well known to provincial and regency police chiefs and anti-narcotics officials.

“Mr. Perangin-angin just focused on the business,” he said. “He didn’t even know then that these men were being transported to the factory.”

Mei Abeto Harahap, the chief prosecutor, said police have not found enough evidence to prove the trafficking allegations against Mr. Perangin-angin and others who have not been tried. “We know it happened, but the police have not submitted the documents for these specific cases,” he said.

Hadi Wahyudi, a spokesperson for the North Sumatra Police, defended the thoroughness of the police investigation and said that the police have gone to great lengths to find potential witnesses to crimes committed many years ago.

Bambang, 31, said his parents sent him to Mr. Perangin-angin’s estate in early 2021 because of his meth addiction. The guards accused him of lying about his drug source when he arrived and repeatedly beat him with a compressor hose, he said. He was given coffee grounds to lubricate his wounds and went to work after his recovery.

In the end, he said, his captors called him a “cage-free man.” He was given a key to his quarters and ordered to supervise other men. Due to his relative freedom, he witnessed many instances of torture and murder, he said.

When Sarianto Ginting arrived at the estate for drug treatment in mid-2021, Dewa Perangin-angin, the regent’s son, questioned him, Bambang said.

When Mr. Ginting insisted he did no drugs and only drank, Dewa Perangin-angin hit him with a piece of wood and hit him with a compressor hose, Bambang said.

“He was so thrilled to see people being tortured,” says 34-year-old Sueb, another victim, describing Dewa Perangin-angin. “When he tortured people himself, things got out of hand.”

Despite the man’s injuries, Dewa Perangin-angin ordered Mr Ginting to bathe in a nearby pond and told the guards to push him inside, Bambang said. The second time Mr. Ginting went down, he didn’t come up.

Bambang, who helped retrieve Mr Ginting’s body from the pond, said he declined an offer of a car and $33,000 – a huge sum in the village – not to testify against the Perangin angins. Dewa Perangin-angin and another man were convicted of torturing Mr. Ginting to death.

Dewa Perangin-angin was quietly released after serving half of his 19-month sentence. A video showed him laughing and dancing at a wedding this year.

Dera Menra Sijabat reporting contributed.