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)