No other suspects in Marsinah case

SURABAYA, East Java: Police have not found any new suspects in their investigation of the slaying of labor activist Marsinah since the Supreme Court exonerated several suspects last year, a police spokesman says.

"The National Police have not yet found other suspects, be they new or from among the previous group of suspects, for the 1993 murder of Marsinah," East Java police spokesman H. Sofwat Hadi was quoted by Antara as saying here on Saturday.

Marsinah was found dead after organizing a strike at PT Catur Putra Surya, a watch manufacturer in Sidoarjo, East Java. Her badly mutilated body was found on May 9, 1993, in an abandoned shack near Nganjuk in East Java.

The case is still under police investigation. Judi Susanto, a company director and the 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, a secretary at the company, was acquitted later in the same year.

The remaining seven defendants were acquitted by the Supreme Court in May last year.

Sofwat said police were waiting for the results of a DNA test on a blood sample, said to be Marsinah's, found where the activist was tortured. The sample was sent to the United States in Oct. 1995.

"We'll wait, because a case can only be considered closed and unexplained after 20 years," he said.

Without the test results, the police cannot continue their investigation, Sofwat said.

The lawyer representing Judi and another exonerated suspect, Trimoelja D. Soerjadi, said it was "strange" the test was taking so long. (swe)