Indonesian forensic experts say 'science never lies'

By Yogita Tahil Ramani

JAKARTA (JP): Not all questions one asks can be answered in a lifetime, but science tries its best to provide factual answers. It is up to humans to decide on how these answers are interpreted and presented to the public.

How can a rubber bullet kill? Did a metal bullet come from a SS-1 rifle or another type? What brand of gasoline was used to burn a man alive? These are only a fistful of questions that the National Police Forensics Laboratory (Puslabfor) has answered since its establishment in Surabaya, East Java in 1954.

Puslabfor chief Brig. Gen. Suwahyu, who assumed the post last August, and his deputy, Col. Dudon Satya Putra, who has worked in the laboratory for the past 20 years, said in an interview last week with The Jakarta Post that like every scientist, regret hardly comes from getting the results of a lab report.

Both officials among others described the importance of an untouched crime scene, and disappointments felt by all Puslabfor staff members when justice is neglected in conveying the contents of a Puslabfor report. Here are some excerpts of the interview:

Question: People still say that Puslabfor failed to reveal those behind the Trisakti University shooting incident last year and the killer of Yun Hap, who died on Sept. 24. In the Trisakti case, what was it that Puslabfor could not do that Canadian laboratories could?

Answer: Please, don't call it Canadian laboratories. The bullets taken from the two-week-old, dug-out corpses of students Heri Hartanto and Hendriawan Sie were not examined in any Canadian laboratory, forensic or otherwise.

Forensic Technologies WAI Inc. of Canada is a factory which uses a demo-prototype, a new research prototype, to find out which guns the bullets originated from. They used scores. The highest on the scale, if I'm not mistaken, is 120, indicating an accurate, total match of results. The Canadian results were about 60 or something. In science, you can't give a half.

Puslabfor here came up with a 100 percent match. We know which rifles the bullets came from, and who the killer or killers were. The lab report, as existing regulations require, had to be submitted to the Jakarta Military Police (Pomdam) investigators. Case closed.

In the case of Yun Hap, we know from which of the (eight) suspected rifles the bullet came from. We know the kind of rifle, and the name of the officer who owns that rifle. We are not at liberty to give you any other information.

What is it that you expect when the truth comes out?

We just don't want our investigations hampered or compromised in any way by any other institutions, by any individuals. We want the National Police (Polri) to be on its own as soon as possible.

Explain the kind of condition the bullet has to be in order for it to be examined.

A bullet can only be examined in its whole condition. If it is fragmented beyond 40 percent, there is no use in examining it. From it, we can find out the caliber, the year it was manufactured and, of course, the factory that produced it.

We can also learn its composition and type. There are several kinds of bullets. War bullets, bullets that paralyze, bullets with very high speed which can pierce a certain, wanted depth. For the composition of metal and an examination of rifling marks, a scanning electron microscope (SEM) is used.

How do you handle bomb cases?

We use a gas chromatography (GC) to examine the amount of, among other things, nitrate in the evidence. In the olden days, a GC used to be up to 500 feet long. Now you can have a GC, a mass spectrometer (for the examination of paints) and an infrared in one device. There are several kinds of bombs. When a blast occurs, the bomb itself does not totally disintegrate into thin air. There is always bomb residue left behind. That is enough to determine what the composition of the bomb was and what mechanism was used to activate it.

In the case of flammable toxic compound trinitrotoluene (TNT), we use a gas chromatography for the nitrate compound.

The gas is injected into the GC, the stylus traces its line on the moving graph of the GC, and not long after, you have your answer. In any sort of explosion or fire, the bomb itself is never totally gone. There is always residue.

An untouched crime scene is significant. When a blast occurs, for instance, in a taxi on a main road ... we don't care if a huge traffic jam is caused because of it. That location has to remain exactly the same until we arrive there and take charge.

Sometimes the traffic police consider it okay for cars to keep moving and passing the scene, or even running over the blasted residue on the road ... That's jeopardizing the investigation.

What are the most conventional kinds of bombs which can be easily made nowadays?

That has to be a sugar bomb. It is not made from any Army explosives, just sugar and calcium nitrate. People use it to blast fish. We have many of those cases here.

What kind of evidence can be checked for in a rape case? How is this evidence stored?

Saliva, sweat, hair, sperm, bloodied sheets, anything that is found at the crime scene. It also depends on the humidity of the room (area) where the rape took place. If the air in the room was humid, fungus starts to grow on it. If it does, it's no use to us.

In the case of using saliva, sperm, sweat or mucus from the nose in serology, they are normally unseen unless there are obvious thick globs of saliva or sperm. How do you locate it in the first place?

We use an ultraviolet scanner. It detects sperm or saliva or sweat immediately. Once we find it on a bed sheet, we cut the portion out. If it can't be cut out ... we take the whole sheet. Hair, too, can be checked for DNA, which is the "customized" print for each human being. But a strand of hair, however long or however minute, is no good if the strand has no follicle.

In the case of rape, the woman usually tries to fight back. We find the evidence in her fingernails. The bits of skin or even hair ... the genes of the aggressor are all there under her nails. Once they are processed, they will be checked with the DNA of, for instance, the 10 selected suspects allegedly involved in the rape case. And we make a match.

In any sort of case, what happens if you don't make a match?

Whether a match is made or not, a lab examination is repeated at least twice to make sure. Whether it is done three, four or even 10 times, each time we do it with a different team of experts. We have to be very careful, even when we read autopsy reports and make decisions based on it.

Meaning?

For instance, a person was hit by a car at 5:10 a.m. But the autopsy report says he died at 5:08 a.m. If the autopsy report is 100 percent correct, then it most likely means the victim suffered a heart attack before he was hit by the car.

How do you handle cases of arson or a short circuit? How are ashes useful here?

Again the scene of the crime is very important. We find out the source of the fire. Ashes are taken, and its air is injected into the gas chromatography to find out if it was a short circuit or gasoline was used. And if it was gasoline, then what brand (there are several) and what type, unleaded or leaded, will be determined.

For instance, gasoline is thrown on a table in a room and a fire is lit. The fire climbs up the electrical circuit and you have a short circuit. First thing we find out is if there is any gasoline, any traces of it, in the room.

What if the ashes of a person, or material, were stored in a can for a few hours before it reaches a Puslabfor staff member's hands?

Then it becomes quite difficult. Even if we try and put a syringe into the lid of the can to extract the air and inject it into the gas chromatography, it becomes difficult. We cannot guarantee accurate results. The crime scene must be left untouched until we arrive.

What about paint?

We use a mass spectrometer. We can determine the quality of paint (high/low), which brand, manufactured in which factory and which year. We contact the factory to get more information about the paint and find out which factories the paint was distributed to.

What does a document and counterfeit money forensics division do?

We examine everything that needs to be found out about the document. The ink, the writing, the raw material used to make the paper and which year that quality of paper was produced in, the postage, the signature and the stamp. We use a scopeman or an esda for that.

The scopeman and esda are computerized devices used to determine if the signature on the document is real or fake. We put the document inside the scopeman, which is linked to a computer screen. The image is magnified several times and we combine this to the image of the real signature.