Oki's ex-wife claims ignorance of his crimes

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)