Suspect in Munir murder to go on trial next week

Suspect in Munir murder to go on trial next week

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, a pilot with Garuda Indonesia, is
expected to be in the dock next week when the first court hearing
of the murder case of top human rights campaigner Munir begins.

Prosecutors submitted the case against Pollycarpus to the
Central Jakarta Court on Friday, charging him with being an
accessory to the premeditated murder. He could face the maximum
penalty of death if proven guilty.

He has also been charged with falsifying documents.

"The first hearing will be held next week," said court
president I Made Karna on Friday.

A panel of five judges has been appointed to hear the high-
profile case. A case is normally heard by a panel of three
judges.

Judge Cicut Sutiyarso will head the panel of judges Sugito,
Liliek Mulyadi, Agus Subroto and Ridwan Mansyur.

"We will present 35 witnesses, including Munir's wife
Suciwati," said Edi Saputra, a prosecutor with the Jakarta
Prosecutor's Office.

Munir, a co-founder of human rights watchdogs Kontras and
Imparsial who had condemned the human rights abuses allegedly
committed by the military, died onboard a Garuda flight from
Jakarta to Amsterdam on Sept. 7, 2004. An autopsy performed by
Dutch authorities found a lethal amount of arsenic in his body,
leading to the conclusion that he had been murdered by poisoning.

The police declared Pollycarpus a suspect in March.
Pollycarpus, who was onboard the flight in his capacity as an
aviation security officer, offered his business class seat in
exchange for Munir's economy one, during the first leg of the
flight from Jakarta to Singapore. The autopsy did not rule out
the possibility that Munir was poisoned during the one-hour
flight from Jakarta to Singapore.

The police have come under criticism for the slow progress of
the investigation. Aside from Pollycarpus, two other suspects
have been named -- Oedi Irianto and Yeti Susmiyarti -- Garuda
flight attendants who served the in-flight meals.

A government-sanctioned fact finding team, assigned to help
the police in the investigation, said upon the expiry of its term
in a report to the President that the murder of Munir was a
conspiracy, allegedly involving certain former and active
officials of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).

The team also said that Pollycarpus, believed to be a BIN
agent, had been in phone contact with BIN officials before and
after Munir's death.

Meanwhile, the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of
Violence (Kontras) and the Asian Federation Against Involuntary
Disappearances (AFAD) urged on Friday President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono to set up a new independent commission to help speed up
the investigation of the Munir case.

The AFAD said it had also sent a letter to the United Nations
to put pressure on the government to resolve the case quickly,
and vowed to stage demonstrations in front of a number of foreign
embassies in Jakarta if the government failed to resolve the case
by Sept. 7 of this year, Antara quoted the non-governmental
organization as saying.