Activists study 'suspicious witnesses' over Munir murder

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In a bid to speed up the investigation into the alleged murder of top human rights campaigner Munir, members of the government- sanctioned fact-finding team have recently fixed their sights on 11 transcripts containing testimonies of witnesses questioned by the police.

Usman Hamid, a member of the team, said their probe was now focused on the 11 suspicious witnesses, both passengers and crew members of Garuda, who were on the same flight as Munir from Jakarta to Amsterdam on Sept. 7, 2004.

"In this step, we picked 11 dossiers of suspicious passengers and airplane crew members who flew from Jakarta to Singapore, where the plane made a stopover before it continued on to Amsterdam.

"We intentionally picked that particular leg of the journey as we believe that was when he (Munir) might have consumed the arsenic," said Usman, also a Coordinator of the National Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).

The police have so far questioned at least 91 witnesses and collected a lot of other information.

Usman refused to name the 11 people in question, but said that his team might come up with names they would like investigated further by the police or named suspects.

Munir, the co-founder of Kontras, died a few hours before landing at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. He was traveling to the Netherlands to start a master's degree in human rights at Utrecht University.

An autopsy conducted by Dutch authorities found that Munir had excessive arsenic levels in his body, leading to suspicions that he was poisoned to death during the flight.

The move by the team to choose the 11 suspicious dossiers came amid strong criticism from the team against the police for being too slow in the investigation as it had not yet named any suspects.

The accusations came up after the team held its first meeting with the police investigators last week, during which the police complained of a lack of support from related ministries, including the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The investigators also said that the questioning of witnesses had been difficult and time-consuming because some of them were residing in the Netherlands.

"But I don't think it should be a problem, though. They (the police) can actually coordinate with the Indonesian embassy in that country," Usman told The Jakarta Post.

Activists from Kontras had earlier interviewed a Garuda employee, who had called Munir's house three days before his death. The employee, named Policarpus, told Munir's wife Suciwati that he would take the same flight as Munir to the Netherlands.

Policarpus also greeted and introduced himself to Munir and Suciwati when they arrived at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. He also had a conversation with Munir on board the flight to Singapore after having persuaded Munir to move from economy class to executive class. Policarpus has not been named a suspect.