Kalla's soup not killer dish: Police

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

Police confirmed on Friday there were an insignificant levels of arsenic found in the soup prepared for Vice President Jusuf Kalla when he visited Bali.

Denpasar Police head of the forensic and laboratory unit, Sr. Comr. Budiono, said that samples of the food items contained 0.09 mg of arsenic.

"Of the four samples we took, we found arsenic in the two samples of the soup, but we did not find it in the other two samples of the slices of cabbage leaves and fried chicken," Budiono said here.

Budiono said the level of arsenic, which were identified through the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer and reduction and oxidization methods, was relatively far lower than the level that could lead to death.

"If the level is at 185 mg ... per liter of water, then it can cause death. So, you can conclude yourself the possible effect of the amount we discovered of only 0.09 mg," he said.

The safe level of naturally occurring arsenic in the environment that humans could breathe in without harm was 0.05 mg, he said.

"So, it is still quite harmless if the level of arsenic is a little bit higher than that," a police forensics specialist, who studied in the United Kingdom, said.

A number of vice presidential guards suspected the presence of arsenic in the food prepared for Kalla when he arrived here on Wednesday to meet participants of the Golkar Party Congress. Kalla is vying for the party's chairmanship post.

It remains unclear why the guards suspected the dish of containing arsenic; the substance is colorless and tasteless and not easily detected without a laboratory test.

Human rights activist Munir, who died of arsenic poisoning in September, is strongly suspected to have been deliberately poisoned in a political assassination.

Police said they would continue to test the food to find out where the low level of arsenic came from.

"We are trying to find out where the arsenic came from, whether it's from the water itself, the cooked food, or the spices. But we also need to remember that there's also arsenic all over us, even in the air we breathe," Budiono said.

Detectives chief Sr. Comr. DBM Suharya said police had questioned five people who were directly involved in serving the food to Kalla.