Police should get full autonomy in Marsinah case

Police should get full autonomy in Marsinah case

JAKARTA (JP): As police are expressing confidence that some
answers may be in sight in the reopened investigation into the
murder of labor activist Marsinah, a legal expert has called for
the enquiry to be carried out with greater professionalism and
that it be granted complete independence.

Satjipto Rahardjo, a lecturer at Diponegoro University in
Semarang, Central Java, said there was a danger that the fresh
investigation into Marsinah's murder would flounder unless police
were granted "full autonomy" and managed to pursue the culprits
in a "really professional" manner.

Satjipto, who is also a staff lecturer at the Semarang Police
Academy, said it was the absence of those two factors that had
created "complications" in the previous investigation, with less
than optimal results.

The police needed to learn from the mistakes made in the
previous investigation, Satjipto said on Monday, as quoted by
Antara. "In order to get good results, the new investigation
should refer back to the first," he said.

"All parties should be willing to gracefully admit it, if any
members of theirs are eventually found to be involved in the
case," he said.

Satjipto did not explain what he meant by the terms "members"
and "parties".

Both the East Java police and the national police have
announced separately during the past week that they have new
suspects in the case and that the solution to the mystery of who
killed Marsinah is in sight.

The authorities acknowledged that the "new suspects" were not
necessarily different from the nine people convicted after the
first investigation and later exonerated by the Supreme Court on
the ground of insufficient evidence. The Supreme Court's decision
prompted the police to launch a fresh investigation into the
murder.

East Java Police Chief Maj. Gen. Roesmanhadi told reporters
last week that his force had identified a number of people
suspected of being involved in the 1993 murder of Marsinah.

It was also Roesmanhadi who disclosed earlier this month that
the police had discovered blood traces, identified as belonging
to Marsinah, in the house of Yudi Susanto. The latter was among
the nine initial suspects.

The announcement came as legal experts argued that, by law,
Yudi could not be tried for an offense of which he had already
once been acquitted.

The owner of PT Catur Putra Surya, the watchmaking company in
Sidoarjo where Marsinah worked, was found guilty by the lower
court of masterminding the murder.

In Jakarta, director of the crime investigation section at
national police headquarters, Brig. Gen. Rusdihardjo, said on
Monday that the number of the new suspects may be two or three.

He did not name the suspects, however. "We wish to adhere to
the principle of the presumption of innocence," he said. "We're
still studying the case...we can't yet name them as suspects
yet," he added.

Since the investigation was reopened last month, police have
questioned four Sidoarjo military officers who were involved in
the industrial dispute going on between Yudi and his employees at
the time of the murder.

So far the investigation has failed to find any evidence
connecting the officers with the murder. (swe)