Lawyer demands revelation of Marsinah murder probe result
JAKARTA (JP): A lawyer in the murder case of labor leader Marsinah questioned yesterday why police took so long to announce the results of a blood test which many expected would shed light on the as yet unresolved case.
Trimoelja D. Soerjadi, the lawyer for the acquitted defendant Judi Susanto, demanded for an immediate disclosure of the blood test results in an open letter to National Police Chief Gen. Dibyo Widodo. A copy of the letter was made available to The Jakarta Post yesterday.
"Why is it taking the authorities so long to announce the results of Marsinah's blood test? It has been two years since the authorities sent a blood sample to the United States for a DNA test," Trimoelja said in the letter.
Quoting a 1992 book, Introduction to Forensic Sciences, the lawyer from Surabaya said it usually takes a maximum six weeks to find out DNA test results.
"Did police really send Marsinah's blood sample to the United States? When was it sent?" Trimoelja asked.
"And if it was truly sent, what are the results of the blood test?" he added.
Marsinah, who organized a workers' strike at PT Catur Putra Surya -- a watch manufacturer in Sidoarjo, East Java -- was found dead on May 9, 1993. Her badly mutilated body was lying in an abandoned shack near Nganjuk, 90 kilometers west of Sidoarjo.
Marsinah and fellow factory workers, who were involved in a labor dispute with the factory's managers, went on strike to demand a 20 percent raise in wages above the minimum wage.
Following negotiations with Marsinah and 12 other workers' representatives, the management agreed to fulfill the demand. Soon after the agreement was signed, however, Marsinah and other representatives were summoned to Sidoarjo Military District Headquarters, where they claimed they were intimidated into signing letters of resignation.
In another part of the letter, Trimoelja asked the police chief to follow up on reports that Marsinah was actually still alive when three policemen of Madiun District Police found her with serious wounds.
"The three policemen did not bring her to the nearest hospital, but instead took her to an abandoned shack and left her there alone," he said.
Trimoelja also asked Dibyo to verify the testimony of two housemaids of Judi Susanto that Marsinah was never brought to Judi's house and kept there for a few days before being taken to another place.
The murder investigation has been full of controversy since the beginning. The arrest of nine defendants in October 1993 was controversial because they were abducted and went missing for a few days before the police announced they had been arrested.
Their trials were also filled with controversy as all of the defendants alleged that they were tortured by the investigators into confessing a crime they never committed.
Authorities have reopened the investigation, even though the Supreme Court has made it clear that released suspects cannot be charged a second time for the same crime.
Judi Susanto, director of the company and alleged mastermind of the murder, was acquitted by the Supreme Court of all charges in November 1994. Another person allegedly involved in the case, Mutiari, secretary to the company, was acquitted later in the same year.
The remaining seven defendants, all of them the factory's employees, were acquitted by the Supreme Court in May 1995. (imn)