Pollycarpus letter of duty 'not in line with procedures'
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The controversial letter assigning Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, the main suspect in the murder of top rights campaigner Munir on board a Garuda plane, to join the fateful Sept. 6, 2004, flight as an aviation security officer could be categorized as a fake, according to an expert.
University of Indonesia criminal law expert Chaerul Huda said that the letter had not been issued in line with the proper procedures and therefore could, according to the Criminal Code, be categorized as a fake.
"But whether it (the letter) is valid or not depends on the institution. If such a practice has been going on for years, then it could be a normal thing," said Chaerul as quoted by newsportal detikcom.
He was speaking as an expert witness in the Central Jakarta District Court on Wednesday during the trial of Pollycarpus.
Pollycarpus has been accused of conspiring with two other Garuda crew members to murder Munir by putting arsenic in a glass of orange juice to be served to Munir during the Jakarta- Singapore leg of a flight to Amsterdam. The indictment says that Pollycarpus swapped his business class seat with Munir's economy class seat to facilitate the murder.
The indictment also describes Pollycarpus as a staunch nationalist who saw Munir as a "hindrance to government programs." Pollycarpus has denied the allegation.
During the police investigation, the senior Garuda pilot said that he joined the flight from Jakarta to Singapore as an aviation security officer as shown by a Sept. 4 letter of assignment.
But a separate investigation carried out by an independent team found that the letter was signed by Garuda vice president of corporate security Ramelgia Anwar instead of operations director Rudy A. Hardono, who is in charge of all Garuda pilots.
The letter was also allegedly typed and signed on Sept. 17, more than a week after Munir's death.
Munir, a co-founder of human rights watchdogs Kontras and Imparsial, died two hours before the Garuda plane landed at Amsterdam's Schiphol International Airport on Sept. 7 last year.
An autopsy conducted by the Dutch authorities found a lethal amount of arsenic in his body, leading to the conclusion that he had been murdered by poisoning.
A report from the now-defunct government-sanctioned fact- finding team also implicated former and serving officials of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) in the murder. It is widely believed that Pollycarpus is also a BIN agent.
The current government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been facing pressure from both activists at home and overseas to quickly solve the murder and bring the perpetrators and masterminds to court.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the panel of judges in the Central Jakarta District Court, Cicut Sutiyarso, demanded on Wednesday that the prosecution put other key witnesses on the stand during Thursday's hearing.
They include the former secretary-general of BIN, Nurhadi Jazuli, and the former deputy director of BIN, Muchdi P.R., both of whom failed to attend Wednesday's hearing.
But prosecutor Domu P. Sihite said that it would be difficult to get Nurhadi to attend in court on short notice as he was now in Nigeria where he served as Indonesia's ambassador.