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Missing report row suggests reluctance of govt to resolve case
Jakarta Post - October 18, 2016
But 12 years on, the high profile murder case of human rights activist Munir Said Thalib remains an unresolved mystery.
After the government's revelation that the case documents were missing from its archives, a furor erupted over the search for the whereabouts of the documents. None of the actors involved in this piece of history want to come forward and reveal the truth.
The National Police and the Attorney General's Office (AGO) say they are clueless, and so too the former members of the fact-finding team tasked with investigating the case. They have ended up accusing each other of having the copies of the documents.
"The police investigation was carried out based on the findings of our report. This shows the National Police and the [AGO] have their copies. Do they need to search for the documents that they already have?" former fact-finding team member Hendardi said.
Days after the team submitted its final report to former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2005, then National Police chief Da'i Bachtiar established another team to follow up on the recommendations of the fact-finding team and carry out a further investigation into the alleged role of individuals with the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) and the state-owned Garuda airline in Munir's death.
The team formed by the police was headed by the former chief of the fact-finding team, Marsudhi Hanafi. The investigation later led to the trial of several individuals related to the case, including former BIN deputy chief Muchdi Purwoprandjono, former Garuda Indonesia pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto and former Garuda president director Indra Setiawan.
During the process, Muchdi was acquitted of the charges laid against him, while Pollycarpus and Indra were sentenced to prison terms of 20 years and 12 years, respectively.
Hendardi said his team had handed seven copies of the investigative report to the government in 2005, assuming that related government institutions would need a copy of the report to fulfill their tasks. "How is it that all of the seven copies have gone missing?"
The missing report comprising the findings into Munir's murder case has been in the spotlight since the Central Information Commission (KIP) ruled that the content of the report was public information and ordered the State Secretariat to disclose it to the public as well as the reason for keeping it secret for years.
The verdict favored Munir's widow Suciwati, the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) and the Jakarta Legal Aid Institution (LBH Jakarta), who jointly filed a suit demanding the disclosure of the report in April this year.
Nothing of significance happened after the KIP issued its verdict early last week, just finger-pointing over the whereabouts of the report. For team-member Usman Hamid, the kerfuffle reflects nothing but the "incompetence of the country's law enforcement bodies".
The long period of time and complicated process taken to solve the case suggests to Suciwati that the people behind the death of her husband were a part of the government.
"I am sure about this," Suciwati told the The Jakarta Post. "For me, anyone in the government who hampers the process is involved in the murder. I will not give up demanding truth and justice".
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