Family finally admits Bogor remains are son's

TANGERANG (JP): Parents of 12-year-old Bambang Arie Prasetyo, who has been missing since he was kidnapped in November last year, have admitted that the dismembered body found recently in Bogor belongs to their son.

Accompanied by close relatives, Adji Sugianto and his wife, Nur Hayati, took the remains from the morgue of the Red Cross (PMI) hospital in Bogor on Wednesday evening after previously insisting that the body was not Arie's.

At around midnight the mourning family sent their son's remains for burial at the hometown of Arie's parents in Wonogiri, Central Java.

Following the family's acknowledgement, police detectives hastily started investigations into the kidnapping and killing of the sixth-grade student from SDN 6 elementary school in Tangerang.

The head of the Violent Crimes unit of Tangerang Police, Second Lt. Sarwanto, told reporters on Thursday that his men had already identified a suspect.

"He's a close relative of the victim's family. We're still tracing his whereabouts," Sarwanto said, refusing to give further details.

According to the victim's relatives, the suspect is Sugianto's nephew.

The partly decomposed body parts -- a head, torso, two arms and two legs -- were found by residents on Sunday buried in the yard of a house in Kampung Bojong, Gunung Putri, in Bogor, about a one-hour drive from Tangerang.

Besides the remains, the locals also found a white elementary school uniform bearing the name of Arie and his school, a saw and a newspaper dated Dec. 18, 1998.

The parents of Arie reported to Tangerang Police that their son was kidnapped from his school compound at 10 a.m. on Nov. 4, 1998.

Sugianto, a member of the administration staff at Tangerang's National Land Agency office, reportedly had fulfilled a money transfer of Rp 50 million (US$7,250) for the kidnapping suspect.

Following the discovery of his son's school uniform with the mutilated body, Sugianto went to PMI Hospital in Bogor two days later, but did not identify the body as Arie's.

A few hours before he eventually claimed the remains, he told reporters at his house in Tangerang: "It's not Arie. My son has body marks. Besides, Arie was only 12 years old."

The PMI hospital earlier announced that the mutilated body was male and between the ages of 30 years and 40 years, weighing 52 kilograms and with a height of 155 centimeters.

Sugianto said on Thursday that his family began to believe the remains were Arie's when they heard a complete report from the postmortem examination, conducted by a forensics team from the Medical School of the University of Indonesia at Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday afternoon.

The results, he said, revealed that the remains were from a 12-year-old boy, and there was a surgery mark beneath his navel, which matched that of his son.

At the family home in Agraria housing complex, a number of people were seen reciting the Koran and praying for Arie.

The victim's mother, Nur Hayati, has reportedly fainted several times.

To reporters, she said: "I still can't believe it. My son is still alive."

Separately, Bogor Police chief Lt. Col. Ade Husen told The Jakarta Post on Thursday that the murderer, believed to have rented a house near the burial site, had buried the body several days before it was found on Sunday by the house owner.

"The suspect knows how to bury a corpse so that it does not decompose easily," the officer said.

But Ade said police are still in the dark about the motive for the kidnapping and killing.

"The victim's parents are not completely open about giving information regarding the case to us. We think that Sugianto (Arie's father) has hidden something," he said.

He speculated that Sugianto had done something to upset the suspect, who then sought revenge by kidnapping and murdering his son.

"For that, we're still digging for any related information," Ade said.

Teachers at Arie's school earlier said that the boy did not resist when he was taken from school. (41/21/bsr)