Ex-BIN official questioned over Munir poisoning
Ex-BIN official questioned over Munir poisoning
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
After months of stonewalling, the former secretary of the
National Intelligence Agency (BIN), Nurhadi Djazuli, agreed on
Monday to meet the government-sanctioned fact finding team
investigating the murder of human rights campaigner Munir Said
Thalib.
However, in an apparent setback for the team, the details of
the questioning site and the substance of the questions look set
to remain a secret.
Usman Hamid, a member of the fact-finding team, told The
Jakarta Post by telephone that the meeting between the team and
Nurhadi took place for two hours in Jakarta.
"The team has agreed not to expose the meeting location and
its substance to the press for practical reasons during the next
meetings.
"All team members threw questions to Nurhadi in line with his
tasks and the official mechanisms in the intelligence
institution. This first session was not directly linked with the
Munir case," he said.
Hundreds of media representatives mobbed the Komnas Perempuan
building in Menteng, Central Jakarta on Monday after rumors the
questioning would be held there, however, Nurhadi and none of the
team members were present.
Any private meeting in the other talked-about location; the
media blacked-out BIN Headquarters in Pasar Minggu, South
Jakarta; would have represented a victory for BIN officials who
had pushed for any interrogation to take place there.
Nurhadi earlier resisted the fact-finding team's summons three
consecutive times because he said the team had no authority to
question him.
Nurhadi, who was recently appointed as the Indonesian
Ambassador to Nigeria, was the main secretary of BIN when Munir
died aboard a Garuda flight from Jakarta to the Netherlands on
Sept. 7, last year.
Dutch authorities found excessive amounts of arsenic in his
body. Some time later, police named pilot, Pollycarpus Budihari
Priyanto, stewardess Yeti Susmiyarti and flight attendant Oedi
Irianto as the main suspects for Munir's murder by arsenic
poisoning.
Pollycarpus was a Garuda security official who offered Munir a
seat in business class, moving him from economy class, during the
flight from Jakarta to Singapore. There is evidence suggesting
Garuda management attempted to manufacture Pollycarpus' reason
for being on that flight and other information suggesting he had
worked as a BIN agent.
Usman, who is also coordinator of the National Commission for
Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said his team
planned to hold a second session with Nurhadi in the same
location next week.
"The questions in the next session will be directed to examine
any involvement of BIN in the fatal poisoning of Munir," he said.
Separately, Munir's wife, Suciwati, went on Monday to the
National Police Headquarters to submit a report on terror threats
made against her family, Usman and herself.
Suciwati, accompanied by her lawyer, Iskandar Sonhadji, said
that she had recently received a unidentified handwritten letter,
which threatened to abduct her, her children and Usman if they
continued opposing "NKRI", the acronym for the unitary state of
Indonesia, and supporting the investigation into her husband's
murder.
The letter stamped on April 27 was sent from Ende, Flores, in
East Nusa Tenggara.
The unnamed senders also said that they had readied Rp 250
million (US$26,315) to hire people to abduct and assault Suciwati
and her family.
This is the second threat addressed to Munir's wife after she
received a brown box filled with a severed chicken head, legs and
intestines with a typed message saying "Do not connect the TNI to
Munir's death. Want to end up like this?"
Suciwati said that she received the letter on May 4 and later
decided to report it to the police. She was not alarmed by the
letter, which had only hardened her resolve, she said.
"Since the threat is only in the form of a letter, Suciwati
did not ask for police protection. She will ignore the threat and
would encourage police investigators to work harder on this
case," Iskandar said.