Pollycarpus suspiciously friendly: Wife

Pollycarpus suspiciously friendly: Wife

Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A Garuda pilot, currently on trial over the murder of leading
human rights campaigner Munir, had approached him a year before
he was poisoned to death in 2004, his widow testified on Tuesday.

Suciwati said the defendant, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto,
acted "weird and too friendly" for someone he did not know well.

Munir died in the business-class cabin of a Garuda flight from
Jakarta to Amsterdam on Sept. 7 last year. A Dutch autopsy found
a lethal dose of arsenic in his body.

Suciwati said she recognized Pollycarpus because he made
several phone calls to her home to ask about her husband's flight
schedule.

"It was on Sept. 2 last year that he (Pollycarpus) called my
husband's handphone. I picked up the phone and he introduced
himself as a Garuda employee. He asked about my husband's flight
schedule and I told him that my husband would travel to the
Netherlands on Sept. 6," Suciwati told the trial of Pollycarpus
at the Central Jakarta District Court.

"He said that he would be traveling on the same flight as my
husband. I told my husband about the phone calls and he just gave
a simple comment that Pollycarpus was a weird person and acted
too friendly," she added.

Presiding judge Cicut Sutiarso asked Suciwati to elaborate on
her statement. She replied that Munir met Pollycarpus for the
first time before her husband flew Switzerland in 2003.

At that time, Pollycarpus introduced himself and asked Munir
to help mail a letter from a nearby post office as soon as his
flight touched down at the Swiss airport, Suciwati said.

"My husband wondered why Pollycarpus had to ask him to do
that ... As a pilot, he could have just asked his friends' help
to mail the letter. My husband was also worried if the
letter would cause him problems."

Prosecutors charged Pollycarpus with violating Article 340 of
the Criminal Code on premeditated murder, which carries the death
penalty.

They also accused Pollycarpus of forging documents to provide
him with a special "aviation security" assignment to travel on
the same flight with Munir on the first leg from Jakarta to
Singapore, during which he allegedly persuaded Munir to move from
the business class to executive class.

Besides Pollycarpus, police have also named two other Garuda
employees as suspects -- Oedi Irianto and Yeti Susmiati.

Suciwati said she was convinced that Pollycarpus executed the
murder of Munir, but urged police to capture the masterminds, who
she described as "untouchables" linked to the National
Intelligence Agency (BIN).

"There was a relation between Pollycarpus and BIN. It's a fact
that cannot be denied," she said.

Former BIN chief A.M. Hendropriyono has denied any wrongdoing
in the murder, but refused to appear before a fact-finding team
formed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The team ascertained that the poisoning death of Munir was
somehow connected with certain top officers in the spy agency.

Munir gained prominence during Soeharto's rule, when he
staunchly criticized human rights abuses by the military.

After Soeharto's fall in 1998, he went on to probe killings by
troops during the bloody struggle for independence of Indonesia's
former province of East Timor, and military-led violence in the
separatist-troubled provinces of Papua and Aceh.

"Beginning in the late 1990s when my husband began to fight
for people's rights, my family has received seven threats,
including bomb terror threats addressed to our house (in
Semarang, Central Java) and to my husband's office (in Jakarta).
But law enforcers never brought a single case to court," said
Suciwati, a mother of two.

"These incidents should tell the court that my husband was
targeted by heartless parties."

During Tuesday's trial, the court also heard testimony from
members of Garuda's board of directors, including its former
president Indra Setiawan.