Police cross-examine Munir suspects

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Three Garuda Indonesia employees, suspected of having a role in last year's murder of noted human rights activist Munir, confronted each other during a five-hour interrogation on Thursday to defend their statements in the case.

The Garuda employees are pilot/security officer Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, and flight attendants Yeti Susmiyarti and Oedi Irianto, who prepared and served meals to business class passengers on the Jakarta-Singapore-Amsterdam flight wherein Munir was believed to be poisoned last September.

Garuda lawyer Wirawan Adnan said Yeti admitted that she saw Pollycarpus enter the business class pantry twice during the flight.

Earlier, both Yeti and Oedi had been quoted by another lawyer, Mohammad Assegaf, as saying they had not seen anyone enter the pantry except themselves.

"Yeti now says she saw Pollycarpus leave his seat and walk into the pantry. She saw him come out and enter again for a second time while writing something on a piece of paper," Wirawan said.

He added, however, that Oedi, who claimed to have been in the pantry at all times during the flight, did not see Pollycarpus enter the pantry area, in which passengers and Garuda crew members are not allowed, except for those in charge of serving meals.

Yeti's statement will likely put Pollycarpus' legal team in a difficult position in the case, in which he was charged with "facilitating" the murder of Munir as he had arranged for the rights campaigner to sit in business class.

Munir, a co-founder of human rights groups Kontras and Imparsial, was found dead on board a Garuda plane carrying him from Jakarta to Amsterdam on Sept. 7 last year.

An autopsy conducted by the Dutch authorities found an excessive amount of arsenic in Munir's body, indicating that he was deliberately poisoned, possibly during the first leg of the flight between Jakarta and Singapore.

Police investigators believe that the arsenic might have been put into Munir's meal that was prepared by Oedi and served by Yeti.

However, unlike Pollycarpus, whom many local rights campaigners believe has links to the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), Oedi and Yeti have not been jailed, despite being named suspects.

Garuda has, meanwhile, addressed Pollycarpus' complaints by providing him with lawyers, including Mohammad Assegaf and Wirawan Adnan.