Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono under fire over spy's acquittal

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent | January 03, 2009 | The Australian

INDONESIAN President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono faces a political crisis unless he quickly addresses outrage over the acquittal of a senior former spy on murder charges, activists say.

Retired major-general Muchdi Purwopranjono, a former deputy head of Indonesia's national intelligence agency, walked free this week after judges in a Jakarta court said they could not find him guilty of masterminding the poisoning death of human rights lawyer Munir Said Thalib.

Dr Yudhoyono reacted to anger at the decision by announcing he would ask Attorney-General Hendarman Supandji and chief of police Bambang Hendarso Danuri to explain how an apparently strong case had collapsed.

Leading human rights activist Usman Hamid, a close friend of the murdered man and his successor as head of rights organisation Kontras, the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence, said the verdict "clearly undermines Yudhoyono's credibility".

"I think SBY will not and should not be silent on this," Mr Hamid told The Weekend Australian.

"He should do more. The President has full authority to instruct the chief of police to look for new evidence."

Dr Yudhoyono's hand could be forced by a very direct precedent: he instructed prosecutors two years ago to re-examine the acquittal of the man charged with murdering Munir by giving him an arsenic-laced drink during a stopover at Singapore's Changi airport in 2004. That man, off-duty Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, was eventually sentenced to 20 years' jail for the murder.

Mr Muchdi was on trial for ordering Pollycarpus to carry out the crime, allegedly on the basis that Munir's uncovering of human rights abuses in the military had angered Mr Muchdi and other senior military establishment figures.

Mr Muchdi was briefly head of the country's crack Kopassus, or army special forces unit, a position from which he was removed after Munir's abuse revelations.

Dr Yudhoyono came to office in 2004 promising to clean up the country's notoriously corrupt bureaucracy and military, and the Munir trial had been seen as one of the key tests of that vow.

However, with parliamentary elections coming up in April and direct presidential polls soon afterwards, the verdict has the potential to become a dangerous political football.

"This year is a very political year, so it will certainly be politicised by many parties," Mr Hamid said.

The contents of as many as 40 phone conversations allegedly made between Pollycarpus, Mr Muchdi and former intelligence agency chief MA Hendropriyono would be crucial to an appeal, he said.

The failure of prosecutors to force those conversations to be admitted as evidence in the failed case remains one of the unexplained aspects of the acquittal.

Mr Hamid yesterday accused the prosecution of "producing a partial indictment (in an attempt to) try to reduce the political liabilities of the case".

"As long as the case only focused on Muchdi, it couldn't go to the full involvement (of the intelligence agency) in what was clearly a conspiracy to murder Munir," he said.

"The truth that has been revealed so far is only a partial truth."

Former agency chief Mr Hendropriyono has not been charged over the death, though Mr Hamid said he believed there was enough evidence to do so.

Mr Hamid, Munir's widow, Suciwati, and others have requested a meeting with Dr Yudhoyono, which they hope will be within days, probably after the President meets his two most senior law enforcement officers.

Another prominent rights group, Pijar Indonesia (The Indonesian Information Centre and Information Action Network), described Mr Muchdi's acquittal as "the worst New Year's gift from law enforcers to the people ... the verdict threatens the country's human rights defenders by implying you can walk away after killing them".

Mrs Suciwati called for anyone who had information regarding the connection between Pollycarpus, Mr Muchdi and Mr Hendropriyono to bring it to the campaign's attention.

A lawyer for Mr Muchdi, Mahendradatta, accused the activists of "trying to form public opinion", which he feared review judges would subsequently be afraid to go against.