`Officer transferred over murders'

`Officer transferred over murders'

Agence France-Presse, Jakarta

A senior police officer in Papua province who implicated soldiers in an ambush near the Freeport mine said Tuesday he had been transferred to Jakarta.

Brig. Gen. Raziman Tarigan, Papua deputy police chief, said he had been assigned a new post as the chief provost at police headquarters in the Indonesian capital.

"The handover ceremony will be held today," Tarigan told AFP.

Tarigan said he was replaced as Papua deputy police chief by Gen. Comr. Tommy Jacobus.

He denied that his transfer was connected to his revelation of possible military involvement in the Aug. 31 deadly ambush near the US-owned Freeport gold and copper mine.

Gunmen fired well over 100 shots at buses near Freeport on Aug. 31, killing two U.S. teachers and an Indonesian colleague, police said.

In November, Tarigan said Kopassus special forces soldiers were suspected of carrying out the attack.

He said a native Papuan, who had been an informer and guide for a local unit of Kopassus, told police a week after the ambush that he knew the names of four of 11 soldiers involved in the attack.

But top security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said this month that a joint police and military inquiry into the attack had found no evidence so far that soldiers were involved.

Army officials have previously blamed the ambush on separatist Free Papua Movement members, a poorly armed group which has for decades waged a low-level sporadic revolt in the country's easternmost province.

Alberth Rumbekwan of the Papua human rights group Els-Ham Papua Barat said he suspected Tarigan was replaced because he had implicated the Indonesian military in several violent incidents in Papua, including the Freeport shootings.

"The deputy police chief was very brave to resolve cases with Indonesian Armed Forces involvement," Rumbekwan said.

Tempo weekly newsmagazine said another officer, Adj. Sr. Comr. H. Sumarjiyo, had also been assigned a new post outside Papua. Tempo said Sumarjiyo, like Tarigan, had implicated soldiers in the shooting incident.

Reports of military involvement in the attack could seriously undermine U.S. and Australian efforts to resume full military ties with Indonesia, restricted since 1999 because of the military-backed violence in East Timor.

U.S. President George W. Bush has reportedly called for a Bali-style joint investigation into the ambush.

National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar said on Sunday he had no objection to a possible involvement of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the investigation.