Former intelligence official arrested in Indonesia
Updated
The former deputy head of Indonesia's top intelligence body has been arrested, for alleged involvement in the murder of a prominent human rights activist four years ago.
Muchdi Purwo-prandjono was arrested as a key suspect in the murder of Munir, the c0-founder of Imparsial and Kontras, two groups critical of the military and its methods of quashing dissent and separatism. Munir died in September 2004, while flying from Jakarta to Amsterdam, on the national airline, Garuda. An autopsy by Dutch authorities showed he died of arsenic poisoning. Indonesia's Supreme Court earlier this year sentenced the plane's pilot, Pollycarpus Priyanto, to 20 years in jail for his part in Munir's murder.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Damian Kinsbury, Deakin University
KINGSBURY: Yes, I think it was always clear that the investigations had been incomplete and all throughout the case, the state intelligence agency BIN had been identified as having a high degree of probable culpability in the matter. But of course it's an enormously powerful agency and had for years managed to avoid any investigation. It had actually blocked the investigation into it. So what this means is that the investigations have actually now broken through that barrier and I suspect that it's part of the President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's drive to actually make sure that the legal system does work.
LAM: Indeed, as you say, BIN the intelligence agency is a pretty powerful agency, Pak Muchdi was formerly second in charge. So this is President Yudhoyono's attempt do you think to show that the key arms of security and military apparatus, that no-one's immune to the rule of law?
KINGSBURY: Well absolutely. Now of course the President himself doesn't run the judicial process, that's independent. But I think that what he acknowledged was that the judicial process had a case to make and that it had been stymied in pursuing that case, because the state intelligence agency is just to powerful and what he's done, he's actually broken down some of those barriers, so the judicial process can actually function properly.
LAM: So do you think human rights groups in Indonesia might be heartened by this latest development?
KINGSBURY: Oh absolutely. I think that there will be, well if not celebrations today amongst human rights groups in Indonesia, there will certainly be a sigh of relief and a belief that perhaps justice can not only be seen to be done in some cases, but can actually be done in those more difficult cases.
One of the questions though which comes up and which still hasn't been answered is the role of the head of the state intelligence agency who had a very strong military background. And he also had been implicated in the affair, but had completely escaped any sort of culpability to date. He may well do so. It's not unconventional in the Indonesian system, that somebody will take the fall for a more senior member. But having said that, for a second in command in an organisation like the state intelligence agency to be charged in a matter like this is an extraordinary change of events and quite frankly not something we would ever have been likely to see well ever at any point in Indonesia's previous history.
LAM: Do you think that this might set a precedent to other more senior officials, for instance, officials in the powerful military to be brought to answer for allegations of abuse and killings by the military in Papua, in Aceh, in pre-independent East Timor?
KINGSBURY: Look yeah, that's an extraordinarily difficult situation for the President to tackle. He is engaging in a process of military reform. It is going at a relatively slow pace, but it is proceeding. The real problems are that if Yudhoyono pushes too hard and to quickly, these institutions could actually topple him from power. So he needs to go step-by-step and I think the fact that the second in command now has been charged and and as I say, an extraordinary step really in Indonesian political life and it will put everybody else on notice. And there were two things to come out of this. One is there may well be further charges against high-ranking officials, against in relation to other crimes that have been committed, but it also means and it sends a very important signal to everybody that high-ranking officials are now no longer immune from prosecution. And I think that's very important because it means they will be much more circumspect about their behaviour in future.
