Family defends Gina against drug allegations

Family defends Gina against drug allegations

By K. Basrie

JAKARTA (JP): The family of Gina Sutan Aswar, the girl who was found murdered in Los Angeles last August, has dismissed suggestions, made in some press reports, that their daughter had been involved in a drug syndicate.

"We strongly believe that Gina had nothing to do with Oki's business in drugs as reported by the media," Tisnaya I. Kartakusuma, a close relative and lawyer for the family, told The Jakarta Post and Kompas yesterday.

Oki is Harnoko Dewantono, an Indonesian who the Los Angeles Police Department says is the main suspect in their investigation of the triple murder of Gina, Oki's own brother Eri Tri Harto Darmawan, and an Indian laundry businessman by the name of Surish Michandani. Their decomposed bodies were found in a storage locker last August and only identified in December.

Tisnaya said Gina did not have a bad record with the police or with the various companies she had worked for during her life.

"We're a happy, healthy and well-educated family, and, unlike drug addicts, she was not from a broken home," said Tisnaya, who runs Kartakusuma & Partners, a law firm. He has been appointed by the family as their lawyer and spokesman.

Gina had always informed her parents and sisters, through letters or by phone, of her whereabouts and what she was doing when she was in the United States and France, he added.

The youngest of five children of Sutan Aswar, Gina was reported missing on Nov. 1, 1992. She was 28 years old at the time of her death.

The last member of the family to see her was her sister Atitje, who saw her off in Paris before Gina boarded a flight to Los Angeles. According to the family's account, Gina was to be picked up by Oki at Los Angeles airport.

Gina and Oki were friends from their high school days in Jakarta. They met again when Gina went to Los Angeles early in 1992.

Tisnaya said their relationship had been strictly business, and stressed that it was not the drug business with which Gina had been associated, as suggested by some press reports.

"She got close to Oki in business matters only because she wanted to get some business experience there and wanted to save up some money to open her own property business in Indonesia," he said.

The family said that Oki had asked Gina to raise $200,000 to join in his property business in Los Angeles. This she duly did by collecting funds from relatives and friends.

"We only know that she had been cheated by this man," he said. "We also believe that her murder was connected with business and that the killing was carried out by more than one person."

"It's a syndicate," said Tisnaya. "The motive for the killing was nothing but business," he insisted.

When her body was found, Gina's baggage was still in perfect order "with not a single drug found," he said. "This proves that our girl had nothing to do with a drug syndicate!"

Tisnaya said the family initially employed American detectives to look for Gina. They later decided to do the work themselves.

"During our early efforts, through the help of an officer at Interpol, we found that Oki was the main person who should have known of her whereabouts, but we could not press him on this point for lack of evidence," he said.

The family reported Gina's disappearance to the Indonesian Consulate General's office in Los Angeles and also to the National Police in Jakarta. "But the police did not take the case seriously, and the Consulate General in Los Angeles accused our family of seeking sensation."

The family is now arranging to have Gina's remains flown home. The body is expected to arrive on Friday and will be buried at the Kemang Purut cemetery in South Jakarta.

Gina's father, 70-year old retired Air Force officer Sutan Aswar, developed a heart condition after Gina went missing, as a result of the anguish of the uncertainty and the long wait for news of his youngest daughter.

When the word arrived in December that police had identified Gina as one of three murder victims, the family had had to break the news to her father very slowly, Tisnaya said.