Activists study 'suspicious witnesses' over Munir murder

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.