Guard implicated in Garuda crash

Guard implicated in Garuda crash

JAKARTA (JP): Despite a large-scale search involving hundreds
of Armed Forces (ABRI) personnel, civilian volunteers and
experts, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder
of the ill-fated Garuda Indonesia Airbus remain missing.

The local search workers, a team from the Airbus Industries
that manufactured the aircraft, along with those from the British
Aircraft Accident Investigation Branch, have been combing an
increasingly larger area from the site where the aircraft crashed
on Sept. 26 in Buah Nabar village in Sibolangit, Medan, North
Sumatra.

So far, Antara reported yesterday, the workers could only find
the handle of the recorders, known as the black box.

Hope now rests on the use of heavy equipment to lift some of
the heavy wreckage of the plane to further search for the
recorders.

"We need heavy equipment like excavators to lift the plane
wreckage, but it will not arrive here until next week," said
Santosa Sayoga, a Ministry of Transportation official.

"We have drawn up a map of the site and dug in places where we
thought the black box could possibly be buried. It is possible,
however, that the black box broke," Santosa said.

Santosa also said the metal detector device sent from England
to help search for the black box could not be used because the
ground surrounding the crash site had dried up. The equipment can
function effectively only if the black box is submerged in water
or in mud, he said.

The Airbus A-300-B4 plane, servicing the Jakarta-Medan route,
crashed and exploded into pieces near Buah Nabar village, in
Sibolangit district, minutes before it was due to land at Polonia
Airport, Medan on Sept. 26.

It was carrying 208 Indonesian passengers, 14 foreigners and
12 crew members, who were all killed in the crash.

Medan police officially detained 32 people from the crash site
for allegedly looting items from crash victims.

A civilian defense unit member, known as hansip, said he was
very shocked upon receiving a police notification stating his
negligence over the cause of the crash.

Bukti Purba, 39, whose duty is to patrol his neighborhood in
Sembahe village, near the crash site, said he could not
understand why police summoned him to the North Sumatra Police
Headquarters Thursday for questioning.

In the letter of summons, signed by the head of North
Sumatra's Police Detective Chief Col. Edi Darnadi, police said
Purba would be questioned as a suspect/witness in a criminal case
"because his negligence caused the Garuda-152 to crash and kill
all people on board".

"I had nothing to do with the plane. I am not a pilot. When
the plane crashed I was relaxing in a coffee shop six kilometers
from the location," Purba told Antara.

Purba said he obeyed his village chief who suggested he defy
the police summons.

Sembahe villagers testified that Purba should instead receive
an award from the police because he volunteered to evacuate the
victims.

North Sumatra Police spokesman Lt. Col. Amrin Karim, however,
said Purba's status was only as a witness. "He is not a suspect,
merely a witness," he told The Jakarta Post.

President Soeharto has asked the public not to draw their own
conclusions into the cause of the crash and wait for the findings
of the ongoing official investigation, which might take several
months to complete. (21/prb)