RI hails GAM investigation
Tiarma Siboro, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Jakarta welcomed on Tuesday Sweden's plan to begin a preliminary investigation of the leaders of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), who are now Swedish citizens, saying the move would help resolve the rebellion in the country's westernmost province.
"We appreciate the response by Sweden's administration because legal action against GAM leaders in Sweden will help us enforce the law against the rebels," Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said.
"The Swedish prosecutors may question witnesses and prisoners of GAM rebels at several penitentiaries in our country. We don't know when they will arrive here, but for us, the sooner the better," Susilo said.
The government, according to Susilo, is planning to set up a team of police and prosecutors to assist Swedish prosecutors in the preliminary investigation over alleged involvement of GAM's leadership in crimes in Aceh and other parts on Indonesia.
Since President Megawati authorized the "integrated operations" on May 19, 2003, efforts to file cases against GAM leaders began, with accusations that they ordered their fighters to carry out terrorist acts across the country.
Any investigation may be complicated by the fact that almost all of the approximately 50 GAM leaders, including the movement's founder Hasan Tiro, have obtained Swedish citizenship since they arrived in the Scandinavian country as refugees in the late 1970s.
Sweden's Chief District Prosecutor Tomas Lindstrand will lead the team to hold the investigation.
Indonesia has blamed the secessionist movement of involvement in the Sept. 13, 2000 bomb explosion at the Jakarta Stock Exchange, which claimed ten lives and injured dozens of others.
Police also believe they have linked the Sept. 23, 2001 attack on the Atrium Plaza in Central Jakarta, to GAM. At least six died.
Security authorities again pointed their fingers at GAM after a blast at Graha Cijantung mall in East Jakarta on July 1, 2002, despite testimonies from the suspects that they had no links to GAM.
Based on the letter sent by Linsdstrand to the Indonesian government, a preliminary investigation could also be held with regard to the charges that GAM was behind the murder of Teuku Nazharudin Daud, an Acehnese religious leader, on Feb. 25, 2000 and also Dayan Dawood, rector of Syiah Kuala university in Aceh, on Sept. 6, 2001.
Meanwhile, GAM spokesman Sofyan Dawood said that the movement's leadership in Sweden was not directly involved on the operational side in the ongoing guerrilla war.
Sofyan also accused Indonesia of filing cases which were based on testimonies from witnesses who "had been forced to confess that they have a connection with GAM."
"We are pleased with Sweden's move to investigate the alleged involvement of our leadership in a series of terror acts, but I'm sure that they will find nothing. We've never been involved in acts of terror and our leadership never ordered us to do so," Sofyan told The Jakarta Post by phone.
Since the government imposed martial law in Aceh and launched a huge operation to crush GAM, who have been struggling for an independent state since 1976, more than 1,300 guerrillas have been killed and 2,000 others have been arrested or have surrendered since then, according to the Indonesian military.