Ex-minister Subandrio dead at 90
Former deputy prime minister Subandrio, who was imprisoned for 30 years for his alleged involvement in an abortive coup in 1965, died on Saturday due to old age.
He was buried at Jeruk Purut public cemetery in South Jakarta later that day.
Born in 1914 in Surabaya, Subandrio was sentenced to death in 1966 for his alleged role in the failed coup on Sept. 30, 1965, which was blamed on elements of the Army and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
The verdict was reduced to life imprisonment after Britain's Queen Elizabeth and then U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson asked that he be spared.
The coup eventually led Sukarno to hand power to strategic reserves commander Maj. Gen. Soeharto, who had taken steps to crush the PKI.
Thousands of alleged party members were imprisoned in a maximum security prison on Buru island, Maluku, without trial, including noted writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Human rights groups said hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the aftermath of the coup attempt.
Subandrio, who also served as foreign minister under president Sukarno, was released from Cipinang Penitentiary in East Jakarta in 1995.
A graduate of the Jakarta Medical School, Subandrio denied involvement in the coup attempt and in 2000 appealed to then president Abdurrahman Wahid to clear his name.
In his unprinted memoir titled "Kesaksianku Tentang G30S"(My testimony on the G30S coup), Subandrio, who was often criticized when he chaired the Central Intelligence Bureau (BPI), said he was imprisoned because he was close to Sukarno.
He said Sukarno's successor Soeharto had manipulated the coup for his own interests and asked the People's Consultative Assembly to endorse Sukarno's letter called Supersemar as a "transfer of power".
At the beginning of the independence era, Subandrio was installed as secretary-general of the ministry of information, before he was appointed as the country's representative head in London (1947-1954) and ambassador to the Soviet Union (1956- 1957).
A friend of former prime minister Sjahrir, Subandrio was a member of the Indonesian Socialist Party (PSI), before he joined the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI) and adopted a radical nationalist stance.
Subandrio was viewed by many as pro-communist and pro-Chinese due to his idea to set up the Jakarta-Pnom Penh-Hanoi-Peking- Pyong Yang political axis.
Two volumes of his speeches have been published under the title Indonesia on the March.
After his wife died in 1974, while serving his sentence at the penitentiary, Subandrio married Sri Kusdyantinah, the widow of Col. Bambang Supeno.
Subandrio was often reported to know the whereabouts of the so-called revolution funds, which were raised by the Sukarno administration. The existence of the assets has never been proven.