Police question 26 in reopened Marsinah murder investigation
Police question 26 in reopened Marsinah murder investigation
JAKARTA (JP): East Java police have questioned 26 people in
the course of their reinvestigation into the 1993 murder of labor
activist Marsinah, Antara has reported.
"There are old witnesses, there are new witnesses. Among the
new witnesses are those who claimed to have met Marsinah at 9.30
p.m (which was) after Marsinah was declared dead," said Col.
Soeroto, the chief of the provincial police detective department,
in Surabaya yesterday.
Accompanied by police spokesman Lt. Col. Sutrisno T.S.,
Soeroto said it would be up to the regional military police to
question potential witnesses from among the Armed Forces.
"We are just pointing out that this or that person might be
involved, it would be up to the regional military police to
handle them. We don't have any authority," he said.
He claimed, however, to have the support of the National
Police headquarters as well as the Brawijaya Military Command,
overseeing East Java, in his effort to reinvestigate the murder.
He did not say when the case was reopened
East Java Police chief Maj. Gen. Moch. Dayat has admitted the
possible involvement of some military personnel in the murder.
Last September, to many people's dismay, police temporarily
closed their investigation into the Marsinah murder after their
last lead, a DNA test, failed because the two-year-old blood
sample had been contaminated.
The DNA test was the last and probably only lead the police
had to sustain their investigation into the murder which had
stirred public outcry both at home and abroad.
In 1994 the Supreme Court acquitted nine people whom the
Surabaya District Court had convicted of Marsinah's murder,
ruling that the trials were inconclusive, and that much of the
evidence was extracted from the suspects by force.
Marsinah was found dead after organizing a workers' strike at
PT Catur Putra Surya, a watch manufacturer in Sidoarjo, East
Java. Her badly mutilated body was found on May 9, 1993, in an
abandoned shack near Nganjuk in East Java.
Human rights activist Maj. Gen. (ret) Koesparmono Irsan said
recently that cases which were hard to break, such as the murders
of journalist Fuad Muhammad Syafruddin and Marsinah and the
shooting of four Trisakti University students, indicated the
involvement of military officers. (swe)