JAKARTA - A FORMER director and a senior staff member of flagship airline Garuda Indonesia are facing jail after being accused yesterday of involvement in the murder of human rights activist Munir Said Thalib.
Former Garuda director Indra Setiawan has been accused by prosecutors of being an accessory to premeditated murder, a charge that carries up to 15 years in jail.
Mr Munir, an outspoken critic of Indonesia's military, died of arsenic poisoning while on board a Garuda flight to Amsterdam in 2004.
Former Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Priyanto was originally found guilty of Mr Munir's murder but had his conviction quashed by the Supreme Court last year.
Prosecutor Noor Rachmad accused Setiawan in court yesterday of being an accessory to the 'intentional and premeditated murder of another person'.
In his testimony at Priyanto's original murder trial, Setiawan said that he received a letter from a senior officer at Indonesia's intelligence agency in 2004.
The letter requested that Garuda make Priyanto a corporate security officer on Mr Munir's flight from the national capital Jakarta to the Netherlands via Singapore.
Rohainil Aini, a former secretary to Garuda's chief Airbus aircraft pilot, also faced the same court yesterday in a separate trial over the Munir murder.
Prosecutor Poltak Manulang accused Aini of being an accessory to the murder as well as issuing a falsified document.
'Had (Aini) not made the false document, then Polly would not have flown on that Garuda flight,' Mr Manulang said, referring to Priyanto.
The internal Garuda document assigned Priyanto to travel on Mr Munir's flight.
Mr Munir died on board the second leg of the September 2004 Garuda flight, a few hours before reaching Amsterdam.
An autopsy by the Dutch authorities found he had ingested a large amount of arsenic, leading police to suspect he had been poisoned during his journey.
Setiawan's lawyer, Mr Antawirya Widjaja, questioned the prosecution's reliance on the assumption that Priyanto was the murderer.
'Has the prosecutor obtained legal certainty that Pollycarpus was the premeditated murderer?' Mr Widjaja was reported as saying by Indonesian news website Okezone. He referred to the Supreme Court's verdict on Oct 3 last year which decided to free Priyanto.
State prosecutors are currently seeking a judicial review into the overturning of Priyanto's conviction.
Mr Munir, who died at the age of 38, had made many high-profile enemies during Indonesia's then-president Suharto's reign and after.
