Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders Annual Report 2006 - Indonesia

Two years later, Mr. Munir Said Thalib's murder remains unpunished⁶⁴

As of the end of 2006, the impunity for the murder of Mr. Munir Said Thalib, co-founder of the Commission for Disappearances and Victims of Violence (KONTRAS), who died on board of a Garuda Airlines flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam on September 7, 2004 was more blatant than ever: not only had no real progress been made in the investigation about those behind the attack, but the principal suspect, who was accused of "premeditated murder", was acquitted.

Indeed, on October 3, 2006, the Indonesian Supreme Court acquitted Mr. Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, a Garuda Airlines pilot. He had been sentenced to 14 years in prison by the Jakarta Central District Court on December 20, 2005, along with Mr. Oedi Irianto and Mr. Yeti Susmiarti, both stewards of Garuda Airlines. The Supreme Court only found Mr. Priyanto guilty of "falsification of airline documents" and sentenced him to two years in prison.

The Court refused to accept new evidence and based itself on the evidence presented in previous trials.

Mr. Priyanto was suspected of offering a first class seat to Mr. Munir and then putting arsenic in his orange juice. He had appealed the sentence when the Jakarta High Court upheld the Jakarta Central District Court's judgment in March 2006.

On December 25, 2006, Mr. Priyanto was released from prison three months before the end of his sentence, benefiting from a reduction of his sentence on the occasion of a bank holiday, an Indonesian tradition.

In June 2005, an official investigation team (Tim Pencari Fakta – TPF) that had undertaken an inquiry from December 2004 to June 2005 submitted its report to the President of the Republic, Mr. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The report suggested the involvement of senior executives of the State airline Garuda and high-level officials of the State Intelligence Agency (Badan Intelijen Nasional – BIN) in the death of Mr. Munir. However, this report had not been made public by the end of 2006 and was not used during the trial.

Moreover, when the TPF summoned the former head of the Indonesian secret services, who was in service at the time of the murder, he refused to respond to this convocation. He then lodged a complaint for defamation against two TPF members, Mr. Usman Hamid, KONTRAS director, and Mr. Rachland Nashidik, director of Imparsial, a human rights NGO. The charges against the men had been dropped by the end of 2006.

On November 7, 2006, the head of the Indonesian police force announced that he would not authorise any foreign intervention in the inquiry into the murder of Mr. Munir, just as Mr. Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur of the United Nations on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, had pledged to Mr. Munir's widow that he would follow the inquiry.

However, on December 7, 2006, the House of People's Representatives asked the President to relaunch an inquiry into the murder of Mr. Munir, to appoint an independent investigation team and to publish the TPF report.

Mr. Munir had played a leading role in the investigations on human rights violations perpetrated by the Indonesian army, particularly in East Timor. He had also led numerous investigations into the disappearances of activists in Aceh and Papua under the Suharto dictatorship.

[Refworld note: This report as posted on the FIDH website (www.fidh.org) was in pdf format with country chapters run together by region. Footnote numbers have been retained here, so do not necessarily begin at 1.]

64. See Annual Report 2005.