Police cross-examine Munir suspects

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.