http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IA30Ae01.html Jan 30, 2007
Justice on trial in Indonesia By Duncan Graham JAKARTA - Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, an airline pilot who in December 2005 was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison for his alleged role in the midair murder of Indonesian human-rights activist Munir Said Thalib, recently walked a free man from prison after serving only one year of his term. His case, which has been closely monitored by the United States and brought to the attention of the United Nations, had been widely viewed as a test case for Indonesia's rocky transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. To many, the pilot's release represents the latest setback to Indonesia's notoriously politically pliable judiciary, which has in recent years frequently burned foreign investors. It also raises hard new questions about President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's ability to dismantle the country's long-standing culture of immunity for powerful figures. Despite a Supreme Court reversal due to insufficient evidence, last November's verdict has not assuaged widespread suspicions that Pollycarpus was directly involved in Munir's shadowy arsenic-laced assassination. It's widely believed that the 46-year-old pilot, who worked for the Indonesian flag-carrier for 17 years, was directly linked to the state intelligence agency, known locally as BIN. Those suspicions have been backed up by independent investigation findings that Pollycarpus made more than 35 telephone calls to the director of the state intelligence organization before and after Munir's death on September 7, 2004. Meanwhile, an Indonesian police investigation also found that Pollycarpus called Munir prior to the flight to Amsterdam from Jakarta via Singapore to confirm his travel plans. He also allegedly arranged for Munir to upgrade from an economy to business-class seat, where the activist received a complimentary drink of orange juice laced with the poison. Autopsies found that Munir had inexplicably consumed four times the lethal dose of arsenic. Pollycarpus, who that day was on a non-flying detail, left the Amsterdam-bound flight in Singapore to assist with maintenance on a separate Garuda plane. Munir soon thereafter fell seriously ill while flying above India and died before the plane landed. The prosecution previously claimed that Pollycarpus's motive was "extreme nationalism", even though Munir, 38, had plenty of enemies at the highest levels of the intelligence and armed forces. Since his release, Pollycarpus has strenuously maintained his innocence against all the charges. "I never met Munir, phoned him at home, talked to him before or during the flight, shook his hand or organized his seating in the plane," he told Asia Times Online during a recent interview at his Jakarta home. "They have to look elsewhere for information. If I could help [the widow] I would - I'm that sort of person - but I can't. I also want to know who are the conspirators behind this." Lending weight to growing calls for a retrial, he later added: "The police and Garuda told me to keep my mouth shut. That meant no one heard my side of the story. I haven't spent any money on lawyers. I don't know who paid them." Powerful enemies Munir had headed Kontras, the independent Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, which under his leadership had been a strong and persistent public critic of the Indonesian government and the military, alleging state-sponsored human-rights abuses in such places as East Timor and Aceh. The activist's offices had on occasion been trashed by unidentified thugs, and staff members received frequent anonymous death threats. The court was told by the state prosecution during the original proceedings in 2005 that Kontras' allegations against the government and military had so inflamed Pollycarpus that in a fit of misguided nationalism he decided of his own volition to kill Munir - another charge the pilot has strenuously denied. "I'm not an agent for BIN or the military," said Pollycarpus, who is considering taking legal action against the state for wrongful imprisonment. "Kontras is always trying to justify itself and the money it spends by pointing at me. I regret what they're doing." During the interview, however, he stopped short of saying he had been the victim of a setup and simply replied, "Crazy, crazy," to many of the allegations that have been leveled against him. Yudhoyono had earlier met personally with Munir's widow Suciwati, and subsequently approved a team independent of the police to investigate the murder. "I believe [Pollycarpus] still knows more about the case," said Suciwati in an interview with Asia Times Online. "I want him to disclose the network behind the murder of my husband. No one should be able to act with impunity. My campaign is to get justice." But with Pollycarpus' recent release, the inconclusive investigation, and the subsequent reversal of a lower court's guilty verdict by the Supreme Court, rights groups contend that immunity has once again trumped justice in Indonesia's courts. Consider: it took the independent group six months to research and report to Yudhoyono and, to date, the team's findings have never been publicly released. The team did say that its findings were incomplete because it lacked the authority to interview top-level officials and access to documents from both Garuda and the state intelligence organization. The team did claim to have unearthed documents revealing four other murder schemes by unidentified plotters against Munir, two involving black magic and two by poisoning. Reported leaks also said the investigators traced more than 35 phone calls allegedly made by Pollycarpus to BIN before and after the murder. This and other information gathered by the independent investigation team, however, was inexplicably ignored by prosecutors in the trial. Sensing a conspiracy, the activist's widow, Suciwati, has been lobbying foreign governments and the United Nations to conduct an independent investigation into the murder. She has also filed a US$1.4 million civil suit against Garuda now being heard at Jakarta's Central District Court on charges of gross negligence related to her husband's death. International rights groups and politicians from sympathetic Western countries have reportedly pushed Yudhoyono's government to reopen the case and go after the alleged masterminds inside BIN. The US, which in November 2005 lifted its embargo on arms sales to Indonesia, which had been imposed because of the military's poor rights record, has also followed the case closely. Washington recently offered forensic help and other assistance for the case, which have, for undisclosed reasons, been rejected by the Indonesian police. Without the emergence of substantial new evidence or, alternatively, serious diplomatic leverage by the US or UN on Yudhoyono's administration, Munir's case seems set to run out of energy. Although a police investigation is still under way and authorities are said to have questioned 77 people, including other Garuda staff, so far no charges have been filed against any new suspects. Meanwhile, BIN personnel have floated the suggestion that Munir could have been the victim of an internecine brawl between competitive non-governmental organizations and have gone on the litigious attack with libel suits against critical groups. BIN officials have also said the refusal of senior BIN staff to meet with the president's inquiry team demonstrates that democracy is taking deeper root in Indonesia society - whereby summonses are not issued arbitrarily and must follow legal procedures. But, as the Munir case appears to demonstrate, democracy and justice still not do not mesh well in today's Indonesia. Duncan Graham is an Australian journalist. (Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
