Oki's ex-wife claims ignorance of his crimes

JAKARTA (JP): The former wife of Oki, the man being tried here for a triple murder in Los Angeles, has testified that although he was violent she knew nothing of his alleged crimes.

"He was constantly beating me up," Anggi Hasti Benjamim, 29, told the Central Jakarta District Court yesterday. She was married to Oki between October 1992 and April 1993.

She said the beatings began as soon as they moved to Los Angeles after their wedding in Jakarta. She was beaten almost every day. "Ours was an abnormal marriage," she said.

Oki, or Harnoko Dewantono, is being tried for the murders of Indian businessman Suresh Gobind Mirchandani, a young Indonesian woman Gina Sutan Aswar and his younger brother Eri Triharto Dharmawan. The Los Angeles police, which began the investigation, said that Suresh was murdered on Aug. 19, 1991, Gina on Nov. 2, 1992, and Eri between late 1991 and late 1992.

Oki, 32, did not deny beating Anggi. When asked by the judges to respond to her testimony, he said: "I was sick of her taking drugs and marijuana."

Anggi was examined for almost two hours by the judges and Oki's lawyers, as they tried to ascertain if she knew of the murders, which were committed before and during her marriage. She said she knew nothing about the alleged murders.

She recalled that there were times when she was suspicious. The way Oki responded every time his mother telephoned from Jakarta asking about Eri made her suspicious. Finding a gun in the house made her suspicious.

But she was not brave enough to ask Oki about these things: "I was afraid that if I asked questions, he would start beating me again."

The couple was married in Jakarta in October 1992 after a four-month courtship. They moved to Los Angeles in the same month.

"He would beat me up for no reason at all. He just punched and hit me with both hands and a golf stick," she said.

The last straw, she said, came when the couple got into a fight while driving in Jakarta.

"I was six months pregnant then, when he beat me and kicked me out of the car in the pouring rain. I thought about running away, but he dragged me back into the car."

Anggi told the court that she had never met any of the victims.

She recalled that an FBI agent had visited their Los Angeles home asking questions about Suresh and Gina.

"Oki told the FBI man that Suresh had once cheated him in the dry cleaning business, and that he only knew Gina as a high school friend," said Anggi.

She said that she and Oki were summoned in December 1992 by the Indonesian consulate general in Los Angeles which was also investigating Gina's disappearance.

A consulate official asked whether on Nov. 2 Oki had met Gina, who was scheduled to arrive from Paris, at the airport. Oki told the official that he went to the airport with her but they did not meet Gina, Anggi said.

Anggi said she was so intimidated that she went along with Oki's story although she did not go to the airport on Nov. 2.

Oki's defense lawyers, led by Henry Yosodiningrat, had objected to Anggi's testimony, citing the criminal code procedure which says that a person who is either married or was once married to a defendant cannot testify in court without the consent of the defendant.

The court subsequently agreed to hear Anggi, but not under oath.

The trial has been adjourned until Aug. 13. (26)