Questions of credibility over Newmont floor Police
Questions of credibility over Newmont floor Police
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Police complained on Wednesday that state prosecutors in Manado,
North Sumatra had given them so many questions in the returned
case file of the six suspects in the Buyat Bay pollution case
that it meant they may have to start the probe again from
scratch.
National police director of specific crimes division Brig.
Gen. Suharto said prosecutors returned the case files with 39
questions.
Six PT Newmont Minahasa Raya executives were named suspects in
the alleged mercury contamination of Buyat Bay in Minahasa, North
Sulawesi. They are Americans Richard B. Ness and Bill Long;
Australian Phil Turner; and Indonesians David Sompie, Jerry
Kojansow and Putra Jayatri.
"Only now they (prosecutors) question the credibility of our
laboratory. We have used several test results from the laboratory
in court proceedings before and prosecutors never doubted them,"
said Suharto.
Other questions related to such things as the verification by
experts on the methods used in collecting samples that led them
to the conclusion that Newmont was responsible for the alleged
contamination.
Police conducted research on the bay in August and tested the
samples in a police laboratory in Jakarta.
They subsequently announced that the bay had been polluted by
Newmont, saying that the tests indicated that the heavy metal
content in the bay had far exceeded the legal limit.
Many have questioned the police's competence in processing
samples taken from the bay as they have never provided details
about their laboratory methods.
Pressure has also been put on the police to explain why the
results of their laboratory test were so utterly dissimilar to
the many other tests conducted there by reputable international
scientists.
The police investigators have insisted that their laboratory
was capable of testing all sorts of samples because they had "up-
to-date equipment acquired from abroad."
They also claimed that they followed scientific procedures in
collecting samples.
However, they have not been willing to publicly explain how
they actually carried out the sampling.
Suharto added that aside from a request for accreditation, the
prosecutors also asked police to gather control samples from
areas near Buyat Bay to be used as a comparison to samples taken
previously from the bay.
"We will send a team on Thursday to gather more samples as
required by the prosecutors. Meanwhile, we will also try to
fulfill other requests," he said.
A police investigator complained that the requests had forced
police officers to start the investigation all over again.
"We've never had these kinds of requests before. It seems they
(prosecutors) deliberately put us in a difficult situation," said
the investigator.