Court continues Pollycarpus' trial
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Central Jakarta District Court on Tuesday turned down a request by a key suspect in the murder of rights activist Munir for the case to be dismissed.
The panel of judges said the indictment against Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto was clear and convincing and in accordance with the law.
"We order the prosecutors to continue the prosecution," presiding judge Cicut Sutiarso told the court.
The judges adjourned the trial until next Tuesday to hear witnesses' testimony.
A team of lawyers for Pollycarpus had said that the indictment was neither accurate nor comprehensive and was difficult to understand. The pilot, they said, was just a scapegoat in the murder case because the police could not capture the true killers of Munir.
Mohammad Assegaf, who leads the team of lawyers, said on Tuesday he would challenge the court's ruling in a higher court.
Pollycarpus is being charged with killing Munir by putting arsenic into orange drink offered to Munir during a Garuda flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam almost a year ago. Prosecutors claimed that the defendant's "nationalistic passion" had driven him to murder Munir, whose campaigns for human rights were deemed detrimental to the unitary republic of Indonesia.
Munir died two hours before the plane landed at Schiphol International Airport. An autopsy conducted by Dutch authorities found lethal quantities of arsenic in his body.
The police have also named Garuda flight attendants Oedi Irianto and Yeti Susmiarti as suspects and put them under city arrest for assisting Pollycarpus in the murder.
Pollycarpus is being charged under Article 55 of the Criminal Code on premeditated murder, which carries a possible death sentence.
Assegaf said it would not be possible for the trial to unravel the truth surrounding Munir's death.
"It is strange that according to the indictment Pollycarpus is representing nobody in the murder, and that he committed the murder for no reason," Assegaf said.
He was skeptical that the five witnesses who would testify would be able to tell the court how Munir was poisoned and who was behind the poisoning.
Also attending the court hearing on Tuesday were Pollycarpus' wife Herawati and Munir's wife Suciwati.
Outside the courtroom, Suciwati called on prosecutors to be more careful in making the indictments because she believed that Pollycarpus was not the mastermind of the murder.
"I'm certain that Pollycarpus was not the mastermind. He was just an operative," Suciwati said.
She asked the prosecutors to take into account the recommendations of the government-sanctioned fact-finding team assigned to help the police investigate the case. The team had linked the murder to high-ranking individuals within the National Intelligence Agency (BIN), with Pollycarpus making numerous contacts with certain BIN officials before and after Munir's death.
State prosecutor Domu P. Sihite said the prosecutors would present five witnesses, including Suciwati, Garuda flight attendant Yeti Susmiarti and former Garuda president director Indra Setiawan in the coming hearings.