Jakarta – FBI agents will come to Indonesia this week to investigate the killing of two Americans in remote Papua province last year that strained ties between Washington and Jakarta, officials said on Thursday.
Police have neither made any arrests nor named any suspects from an incident in which gunmen sprayed bullets at a van carrying teachers from an international school owned by PT Freeport Indonesia, which runs copper and gold mines in the Papuan mountains.
Accusations that Indonesian troops might have been involved in the attack, in which an Indonesian was also killed, have dogged the case. "What I know is that they will come tomorrow or the day after and follow what we have discussed in Washington and Jakarta," chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told reporters, referring to agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
FBI teams have come to Indonesia twice over a case that has put sensitive relations between the Indonesian military and foreign facilities in the vast country under the spotlight. Because of the shooting, the US Senate has cut off $400,000 in military training assistance that would have gone to Indonesia next year in an $18.4 billion foreign aid bill. But under Senate provisions, the aid ban could be waived by President George W. Bush on national security grounds.
Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said the the FBI agents would visit the crime scene near the giant mines run by the unit of US-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc.
Separatist rebels in the resource-rich Papua, at the eastern end of the sprawling archipelago, have been waging a low-level insurgency for decades. The military, which provided security at the site, has blamed the rebels for the attack and repeatedly denied any role.
Chief of the Indonesian military (TNI) Endriartono Sutarto told reporters he would not mind the agents interviewing his men. "Go ahead. Principally, we want the truth to come out. If there is no involvement, say there is none. If there is TNI involvement, say there is," said the general.
In October, a senior US official said Indonesia had committed to cooperate with the United States including giving the FBI "unfettered access to people they wanted to interview."