Pilot Jailed for Poisoning Indonesian Rights Activist

An off-duty Indonesian airline pilot was jailed yesterday for 14 years for murdering one of the country's leading human rights activists by lacing his food with arsenic during a flight.

The poisoning of Munir Thalib, 38, on September 7 2004 was part of a conspiracy, the Jakarta court ruled, but the judges did not speculate on who else might have been involved. An inquiry set up by the country's president implicated the country's intelligence agency, BIN, but nothing was proved.

Mr Munir's wife, Suciwati, and various rights groups believe the pilot, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, was acting under orders; they said yesterday they would continue the hunt to expose the people who had given those orders.

The judges said there was only enough evidence to say Pollycarpus acted in concert with two members of the cabin crew on a Garuda Indonesia flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam. He swapped his business class seat for Mr Munir's in economy before the flight, even though they did not know each other, and then spent time in the galley.

"The accused then pretended to be reading a Dutch magazine while at the same time keeping an eye on Munir to make sure he had eaten all his noodles," Judge Cicut Sutiarso said in the verdict.

Pollycarpus got off the plane during a stopover in Singapore. Mr Munir, who was on his way to begin post-graduate studies in the Netherlands, became violently ill several hours into the second leg of the flight and died two hours before arriving at Schiphol International airport.

A Dutch autopsy found he had very high levels of arsenic in his blood.

The judges referred to the fact that before and after the flight, Pollycarpus communicated regularly by phone with a senior BIN officer. BIN has denied any involvement in the case and no action has been taken against anyone in the agency.

Pollycarpus said he would appeal. "I reject all the charges and this verdict," he told the judges. "I did not do it."

Mr Munir's wife said the verdict had not provided many answers."Who was the real puppet-master?" she asked. "This is what the police should be looking at now."

In June, when the inquiry presented him with its report, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono promised further investigation. But there has been no action since and his spokesman did not answer requests for comment yesterday.

Mr Munir was one of the founders of Indonesia's Commission on Missing Persons and Victims of Violence and campaigned on behalf of victims of state oppression.