Police detain man on Munir flight

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post

The National Police confirmed on Friday that they had detained a man for his possible role in the murder of top human rights campaigner Munir, although for now he was only being charged with immigration violations.

Brig. Gen. Marsudi Hanafi, who leads the special police team tasked with investigating the murder, said that the police had detained on Wednesday one Erry Bunyamin, who was in business class on the Garuda flight on which Munir's murder took place.

"We found that Erry was using a (fraudulently obtained) passport with a fictitious address. He was the 15th passenger in business class on that flight. His name was not on the passenger manifest, which only listed 14 people," Marsudi said.

But he quickly added that for now investigators had found no evidence linking Erry to the murder.

"We have to investigate carefully whether he is linked or not, but from what we know, he boarded the plane late, he was not listed and he got off the plane in a hurry when it arrived in Singapore. He was also carrying a (fraudulently obtained) passport, so it is very suspicious indeed," Marsudi said.

An earlier report quoting sources in this newspaper revealed that the National Police had detained another suspect in the Munir case.

Munir, the co-founder of human rights watchdogs Kontras and Imparsial, was murdered on board a Garuda flight on Sept. 7, 2004, on his way to Amsterdam. He died two hours before the plane landed at Schipol Airport.

An autopsy performed by the Dutch authorities found excessive quantities of arsenic in his body.

Investigators have said that a glass of orange juice served to Munir during the first leg of the flight from Jakarta to Singapore was poisoned. He sat in business class during the one- hour flight after an off-duty Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto gave him his seat.

Meanwhile, Erry's lawyer, Amir Syamsudin, said that his client had been detained by the police for immigration violations, but strongly denied any connection between his client and the murder of Munir.

"He was detained for having a false passport and he just happened to be on the same plane as Munir at the time," Amir said.

Erry, who is a lawyer and a managing partner of Erry Bunyamin and Partners, was a resident of Pangkal Pinang, but obtained a Jakarta ID card under false pretenses using a fictitious address in Bekasi. He then used this ID card to obtain a passport, so that this travel document is also considered illegal.

"He has been charged under articles 263 and 266 of the Criminal Code on document forgery. That's all. Don't try to link him to Munir's murder," Amir said.

Amir said that Erry went to Singapore to meet a client, but failed to give any further information about the meeting.

Currently, the police have named three people, all of whom are Garuda crew members, as suspects, but only one, Pollycarpus, has been detained and put on trial.

According to the report of an independent investigation, the murder of Munir, who had long been a strong critic of human rights violations by the military, was the result of a conspiracy involving certain officials of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN).