Cops quiz Garuda staff again over Munir case

Cops quiz Garuda staff again over Munir case

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Police investigators questioned four Garuda Indonesia
stewardesses on Tuesday and were scheduled to question another
airline employee, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, on Thursday as
part of their investigation into the murder of top human rights
activist Munir.

Head of the investigating team, Sr. Comr. Anton Charlian, told
reporters on Tuesday that the four stewardesses were the ones who
had served food and beverages to Munir, who is believed to have
been poisoned by arsenic during a flight from Jakarta to
Amsterdam on Sept. 7 of last year.

Munir was found dead two hours before his plane landed at
Schipol airport in Amsterdam. An autopsy conducted by the Dutch
authorities found excessive amounts of arsenic in his body,
strongly indicating that he had been murdered. It appeared likely
that the poison was administered during the trip from Jakarta to
Singapore.

According to the results of the police investigation to date,
Munir consumed fried noodles, steak, some fruit and orange juice
so that the poison must have been added to one of them.

The stewardess and other cabin crew members, including
Pollycarpus, a Garuda pilot who was assigned as the aviation
security officer on board the plane, have been questioned by the
police before, but the police decided to question them again
following statements by the government-sanctioned fact-finding
team that members of the Garuda crew might have been involved in
the murder.

"We will also question Pollycarpus here on Thursday and he
will be accompanied by psychologists as he talked nonsense during
a meeting with members of the House of Representatives last
night," Anton said.

On Monday night, Pollycarpus was questioned by an
investigating team set up by the House of Representatives but he
claimed that he did not know and did not remember anything about
the Sept. 7 flight, even the time when the plane took off and
landed.

Anton also mentioned the possibility that the police would use
a lie detector to test Pollycarpus' statements, although the
results of a polygraph test were not admissible in evidence here.

Elsewhere, he said that the police were seeking ways to obtain
the necessary assistance from the Netherlands authorities in
resolving case.

"We have had a lot of difficulties already in investigating
the case since we were not in charge of the crime scene and the
Dutch police did not want to discuss the case with us, even
informally," Anton claimed.

Previously, the Director of Transnational Security, Brig. Gen.
Pranowo Dahlan, said that the Netherlands wanted a mutual legal
assistance agreement signed between the two countries before
Indonesian investigators could do any investigative work there.

"From what I've heard, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have
sent the draft three times to the Dutch authorities. We hope that
the assistance agreement can be signed soon so that it will be
easier for us to do our job," Anton said.

He added that the police would also question three experts on
aviation law on Wednesday about whether the Dutch police should
have been or should not have been permitted to board the plane
and investigate the crime scene even though the plane was an
Indonesian plane and the victim was an Indonesian citizen.