Lawyers to report judges in Munir case

JAKARTA: Lawyers of a Garuda pilot recently convicted for murdering human rights activist Munir announced a plan to report the panel of judges that heard the case to the Judicial Commission.

Lawyer M. Assegaf, who represented Pollycarpus Budihari Prihanto, said on Saturday that they would file the report in the coming days as they suspected that certain parties had tried to influence the judges' decision.

"The mistakes in the verdict are very clear," he said.

Among the flaws, Assegaf said, was the argument that Pollycarpus put arsenic in the noodles served to Munir instead of in the orange juice as stated in the prosecutors' indictment.

Pollycarpus has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for murdering Munir on board a Garuda flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam in September last year. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered the National Police to arrest the masterminds of the murder case. -- JP