'No proof of military's role in Marsinah murder'
'No proof of military's role in Marsinah murder'
JAKARTA (JP): East Java military chief Maj. Gen. Imam Utomo
says there is no evidence that the Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI)
were involved in the 1993 murder of labor martyr Marsinah.
He said on Thursday that the police team assigned the task of
re-investigating the brutal murder had so far found nothing to
support the widely-held suspicion that ABRI personnel played a
role in the killing.
"We will investigate any ABRI members who the team believes
were involved in the affair," Imam said, as quoted by the Antara
news agency.
Activists from the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute in Jakarta,
who conducted their own investigation last year, say they have
evidence that some ABRI members were involved in the murder.
Marsinah, who has been declared a labor heroine by both
activists and the All-Indonesia Workers' Union (SPSI), was
murdered after she led a strike at a watch factory in Sidoarjo,
East Java, on May 4, 1993.
Her horribly mutilated body was found four days later in a hut
in Nganjuk, about 200 kilometers west of Sidoarjo.
The police reopened investigations into the murder after the
Supreme Court freed, this month, seven civilians sentenced to
between four and 12 years for her torture and murder.
The East Java high court in Surabaya, East Java, last November
overturned a lower court decision against Santoso, who had been
sentenced to 17 years in jail for masterminding Marsinah's
murder.
Imam said he believed that those released were involved in the
murder.
He said he was aware of the belief, strongly held by the
public, that ABRI personnel were involved and that the suspicion
had been strengthened when a military court jailed Capt. Kusaeri
for 10 months in 1994.
Kusaeri was found guilty of failing to report to his superior
on a meeting at which the murder was planned.
"Kusaeri is the only ABRI officer who was involved. And
remember that his involvement was not direct. He only failed to
report on the meeting," he said.
If it later proved to be true that ABRI was involved in the
killing, there must have been collusion between individual
officers and company managers, he said.
Imam, who is also chief of the local branch of the national
security agency, echoed ABRI Chief Gen. Feisal Tanjung's pledge
to punish any Armed Forces member involved in the killing.
He said that so far the security agency had not taken part in
the re-investigation but that it would cooperate fully whenever
it was needed.
Commenting on theories that Marsinah was murdered at the
Sidoarjo military district headquarters, Imam said: "I have
investigated it and found it to be untrue."
"Witnesses said they did see her there but they insisted they
met her somewhere else before she went missing at one in the
morning," he said.
President Soeharto has called for a thorough re-investigation
of the Marsinah murder.
Meanwhile, officials of the National Commission on Human
Rights, which also conducted its own investigation, said this
week they were ready to give the police their findings whenever
needed.
Commission member Muladi said in the Central Java capital of
Semarang earlier this week that police were focusing their
investigation on a housemaid of Yudi Susanto, who was the manager
of the watch company where Marsinah worked.
The maid, Susianawati, was considered a key witness, has
testified that she saw Marsinah in Yudi's house before she was
found dead.
Susianawati was reported "missing" from her house just a few
days after the Supreme Court released the seven people convicted
by the lower court.
"Finding the maid will remove the public's suspicion that
there has been an attempt to hide something in the Marsinah
affair," Muladi told The Jakarta Post. (pan/har)