http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22501630-2703,00.html
Garuda chiefs on poisoning charges Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent | September 29, 2007 INDONESIAN prosecutors have filed murder accessory charges against a former Garuda airline chief and one of his deputies in the case of poisoned human rights activist Munir Said Thalib. An off-duty Garuda pilot was acquitted last year of murdering the human rights activist by administering arsenic during a stopover on the long-haul flight. But Indonesia's Attorney-General, under orders from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, recently reopened the case against the pilot, Pollycarpus Priyanto. The charges came as Munir's supporters launched a songwriting competition to mark the lawyer's agonising death on a Singapore-Amsterdam flight, reportedly on the orders of elements in the country's secretive national security agency, BIN. Mr Priyanto denies he gave Munir an arsenic-laced drink in a cafe at Singapore's Changi airport during the stopover on the flight in 2004. Mr Priyanto was originally sentenced to 14 years' jail for the murder, but the Supreme Court overturned the finding, citing lack of evidence and witnesses. Now the former head of Garuda, Indra Setiawan, and the former secretary to the airline's chief pilot, Rohainil Aini, have been charged with being accomplices in Munir's death. The two men have been in jail for some months, but the handover of police dossiers means their cases can proceed to trial. "We consider the dossiers complete and we are sure the evidence is adequate," Attorney-General Hendarman Supandji said yesterday. Mr Priyanto's reopened case caused a political stir when a telephone call between him and Mr Setiawan, his former boss, was played in court. Mr Priyanto was heard telling the jailed airline official not to worry about the trial's outcome because Mr Supandji and the head of the Supreme Court, Bagir Manan, were both on the pair's side. "They're ours," he told Mr Setiawan, although he later claimed he had been joking. The case has become a major test of Dr Yudhoyono's preparedness to eradicate corruption from the country's opaque bureaucracy, and a cause celebre for activists, who marked Munir's murder on September 7 with passionate demonstrations in the capital, Jakarta. BIN is one of the major hangovers of former strongman Suharto's surveillance mechanisms, and has resisted the reforms imposed on many other national institutions since the latter's downfall in 1998. Munir had become an irritant to the security agency for his exposure of abuses in Aceh, Papua and the former Indonesian province of East Timor. Indonesia's Commission for Disappearances and Victims of Violence responded to the latest developments by saying the laying of murder accessory charges was "not enough". "The police must not stop just with these two -- there were others mentioned in Pollycarpus's indictment, such as BIN deputy Mohammad As'ad," commission spokesman Usman Hamid said yesterday. "What's more, Polly must not go free." A Jakarta radio station this week launched the Munir song contest, with the winner to be announced on December 8, which would have been the 38-year-old's birthday. [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/
