Two arrested in painting theft

JAKARTA (JP): Police have arrested two of the nine suspects wanted for the theft of at least 12 paintings belonging to the state collection housed at the National Museum.

Both are museum employees and were arrested a few days ago, National Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dibyo Widodo told reporters yesterday.

"Money was the simple motive of the theft," he said.

The three-star general identified the two suspects as S and B and gave no details of their positions at the museum.

A reliable police source told The Jakarta Post early this week that some of the suspected insiders have important positions at the museum.

The head of the museum, Suwati Kartiwa, declined to comment on the theft.

According to Dibyo, detectives are still tracing the whereabouts of the other seven suspects.

The source, who requested anonymity, said that the other suspects have fled from their homes and families in Jakarta since news of the theft broke late last month.

"All of them are gone but we strongly believe that it's just a matter of time before we apprehend them," he said.

As reported earlier, five of the 12 stolen paintings have been returned to the museum by a Singaporean collector, who had consigned the paintings for sale at Christie's Oct. 6 auction of Southeast Asian paintings in Singapore.

It remains unknown from whom the collector bought the five oil-on-canvas paintings by Raden Saleh, Affandi, Basoeki Abdullah and other well-known Indonesian painters.

Christie's Singapore withdrew the paintings immediately following news reports from Jakarta on the paintings stolen from the National Museum. (imn/bsr)