Team's report entree to tougher Munir probe?

Imanuddin Razak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The move by Asmara Nababan on Wednesday to reveal part of the findings of the government-sanctioned team's investigation into rights campaigner Munir's murder should be given the big thumbs up.

The deputy chairman's decision may have been ethically questionable as the report, although not completely leaked to the media, was disclosed a day before the team was officially scheduled to submit it to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

In the Indonesian context, however, such a move is understandable and even forgivable. Past experience has shown that too-often the recommendations submitted by such fact-finding teams change in substance when they are publicized or never end up seeing the light of day at all.

However, we cannot be completely satisfied with the team's achievements in its investigation, which fingers officials from the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) for the poisoning of Munir on his way to the Netherlands on Sept. 7, last year.

As Asmara stated, the report does not explicitly state that BIN committed an "institutional crime", nor does it state how deeply BIN officials were involved. It has also been unable to uncover the true motive behind the murder.

An autopsy report by the Dutch police has revealed that the 38-year-old activist had nearly 500 milligrams of arsenic in his body, four times the lethal dose.

Speculation has been rife that Munir's death was connected to his cutting criticism of the government and the military over their human rights violations in troubled provinces of Papua and Aceh.

Still fresh in people's minds is the dispute between former BIN chief AM Hendropriyono and the team, which attempted to summons him three times to appear before it for questioning.

Instead of complying with the summonses, Hendropriyono invited the team to his "residence" for the questioning, which the team rejected. A mediation attempt by the House of Representatives (DPR) to facilitate a meeting between the team and Hendropriyono also ended in failure as none of the 14 team members showed up.

The team's inability to question Hendropriyono is apparently due to the limited power it has to force a person to comply with it. Unlike the police, who have the power to force anyone implicated in wrongdoing to appear for questioning, such a power is not mandated in the Presidential Decree No. 111/2004 on the establishment of the fact-finding team.

Paragraph four of the decree does not clearly invest the team with legal powers but only stipulates that the team take the "necessary actions" to professionally engage in a free, accurate, fair and thorough investigation based on the relevant facts.

Ignoring the summonses, Hendropriyono also challenged the team's legality and, ultimately its very existence, by filing a report with the police against two of the team members -- Usman Hamid and Rachland Nashiddik -- for defamation.

The police, meanwhile, were more successful in talking to Hendropriyono, reportedly questioning him on June 11 regarding the Munir case. However, no official announcement has been made by the police about the questioning, nor its content.

So far, the police have only named three Garuda officials, who were on Munir's Sept. 7 flight last year, as suspects. They are pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, who was on board but off- duty during the flight, and flight attendants Dedi Iriyanto and Yeti Susmaryati.

The foundations for a further investigation to uncover the full truth behind Munir's murder have been laid out by the fact- finding team.

The ball will soon be in the police's court and the team's report to the President has recommended that a supervisory body be created to ensure the police seriously probe the matter.

An effective investigation would set an important precedent. If the police proceed with the inquiry and uncover the masterminds behind the murder and their motives, can the nation then expect "real law enforcement" regarding all human rights violations in the country?

Or will the investigation only stop at "the executors" of Munir's murder, with the architects remaining free?