Who Killed Munir?

When Munir Said Thalib, Indonesia’s most prominent human-rights campaigner, died during a Garuda Airlines flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam and was later found to have been poisoned with arsenic, his murder became a test of new President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s pledge to run an open and accountable administration. Yudhoyono set up a 12-member commission consisting of human-rights activists, legal and justice department officials, and a police brigadier. Based on its early findings, police last week arrested a Garuda pilot, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, on suspicion of involvement in the activist’s death.

Though Pollycarpus, 37, didn’t know Munir, he called the activist twice on Sept. 6, the night Munir departedcalls he at first denied making, but which were recorded on Munir’s cell phone. Pollycarpus then boarded the flight for its first leg to Singapore, and, say the authorities, swapped his business class seat with Munir’s in economy; he took a 6 a.m. plane the next morning back to Jakarta. “Garuda doesn’t have any reason to murder Munir,” says commission member Rachland Nashidik, an activist and a friend of Munir’s. “The question is: who has the power to use Garuda for their own benefit?”

Former Garuda CEO Indra Setiawanwho was removed last week with the rest of Garuda’s board in a long-planned management change unrelated to the Munir casesays Pollycarpus was flying to Singapore to check on a Boeing 747 with a landing gear problem, and denies any skulduggery on the part of the airline. As someone who challenged the military, security agencies and big business, Munir had many enemies. Rachland says the commission will next question officials from the National Intelligence Agency. “Let’s hope,” he says, “the investigation doesn’t stop with [Pollycarpus’] arrest.”