Pilot jailed for killing Indonesian human-rights activist
20/12/2005 - 07:36:01An off-duty pilot was today sentenced to 14 years in jail for the poisoning death of Indonesia’s top human-rights activist, but critics said the masterminds remained free.
The court said Pollycarpus Priyanto placed arsenic in Munir Thalib’s meal on a Garuda Airlines flight in 2004 because he wanted to silence the outspoken government and military critic.
But Judge Cicut Sutiarso did not say whether the defendant was acting on higher orders.
“The accused has been found guilty of premeditated murder,” Sutiarso said at the Central Jakarta District Court as he handed down the 14-year sentence.
Priyanto stood up and screamed: “I didn’t do it. I reject the verdict.”
He said he would appeal.
Thalib gained prominence during former dictator Suharto’s rule, when he openly criticised Indonesia’s government and brutal security forces.
He went on to probe killings by Indonesian troops during East Timor’s bloody struggle for independence, and military-led violence in the separatist-troubled provinces of Papua and Aceh.
Priyanto’s trial was seen as a key test of whether President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s government would break with traditions of the Suharto regime, when state-sponsored killings were common and the legal system was perceived as beholden to the ruling elite.
But Thalib’s widow, who has campaigned tirelessly for justice in the case, said the trial showed little had changed.
Though an independent fact-finding team said earlier this year that State Intelligence Agency officials may have been involved in her husband’s death, prosecutors and police ignored the allegations.
Judge Sutiarso noted that Priyanto received many calls from a phone registered to a senior intelligence agent ahead of the murder, but did not elaborate.
“They have to find the mastermind,” Thalib’s widow, Suciwati, told reporters. “Pollycarpus played only a small part in this conspiracy.”
Thalib was on his way to the Netherlands to pursue graduate studies when Priyanto, with the knowledge of two Garuda Airlines flight attendants, placed a massive dose of arsenic in his fried noodles, the court said.
“The accused then pretended to be reading a Dutch magazine, while at the same time keeping an eye on Munir to make sure he had eaten all his noodles,” Sutiarso told the court.
Thalib became violently ill and died two hours before landing.
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