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.