VIVAnews - The trial for the murder of Indonesian human rights activist, Munir Sahid Thalib, continued on Tuesday, 18 November 2008. Former Fifth Deputy of the Indonesian Intelligence Agency, Muchdi Purwopranjono, is being tried for the murder. The trial was scheduled to present two witnesses to testify for Muchdi. But the two witnesses did not show up. The agenda was then changed to the examination of the defendant.
“I knew Munir only after his death,” Muchdi said, answering the question of the prosecuting attorney, on the South Jakarta Courtroom, Tuesday 18th November 2008, “He was famous only after his death.”
Muchdi was accused of being the person behind Pollycarpus, an ex-pilot who was already sentenced to 14 years of prison for the murder. Munir was killed by arsenic, put into his food, during his flight from Singapore to Amsterdam. It was on Flight GA-974 that Pollycarpus exchanged his seat with Munir and it was this act that led him to the trial and verdict.
The accusation on Muchdi was based on a phone record of calls made between Pollycarpus and Muchdi. A Call Data Record (CDR) said that on 7th of September 2004, there was communication between the two. The CDR stated that the phone was at the time located in Surabaya. This was denied by Muchdi. His attorney, Lutfi, presented Muchdi's passport as evidence of his alibi. It stated that Muchdi had been on an assignment to Malaysia from 6th to 12th September 2004.
In response, prosecuting attorney Cirus said that the accuracy of the CDR is 100%. “Free from errors and cannot be added to or tampered with because its purpose is for billing,” Cirus said. Meanwhile, to further counter the passport evidence, a representative of the Committee of Solidarity Act For Munir, Choirul Anam, questioned the fact that the passport was used for state assignment. “Passports for state assignments are blue. But the one that was shown to us was green, that's for civilian,” he said.
Munir himself was said to be murdered because of his investigation on missing activists, who were allegedly kidnapped by the “Mawar team” (the “Rose team”) of Indonesian Special Forces Command (Kopassus). Muchdi had asked the panel of judges not to touch upon the fact that he was Commanding General of Kopassus. He held that position for only three months in 1998. "The time span of the (kidnapping) operation was before I became Commanding General of Kopassus," he said.
Munir was pronounced dead by the time the flight reached Amsterdam. He was the executive director of the Indonesian human rights group, Imparsial.
As covered by VIVAnews reporters.
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