Bhimanto Suwastoyo, Jakarta – Indonesia's Supreme Court has quashed a murder conviction handed last year to a pilot over the death of a leading human rights activist on a flight to Amsterdam in 2004, a court spokesman said.
The verdict will infuriate activists already claiming the national intelligence agency was involved in a bid to silence the activist, Munir, who died in a business-class cabin after being poisoned with arsenic. Activists also saw the case as being a test of Indonesia's adherence to the rule of law.
A controversy over the quashing could prove an embarrassment to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who had promised Munir's widow that he would do everything in his power to seek justice in the case.
A panel of judges, which held a closed hearing for the appeal by Garuda Indonesia pilot Pollycarpus Priyanto, found there was insufficient evidence to support a premeditated murder charge, court spokesman Joko Upoyo Pribadi said.
"The panel, in their deliberations on Tuesday, found that only the subsidiary charges of falsifying a document could be proven and therefore sentenced him to two years in jail," Pribadi told AFP. Priyanto had been sentenced to a 14-year term for the murder.
Munir died on a Garuda flight in September 2004 and a Dutch autopsy found a lethal dose of arsenic in his blood. Priyanto, who was on the flight but off-duty, was jailed after being found guilty of lacing his drink with the lethal poison.
A government-sanctioned team that investigated Munir's death said it had evidence that Priyanto had frequent telephone contact with intelligence agents before and after the murder.
The head of the panel, Iskandar Kamil, could not be reached for comment. But the Detikcom online news agency quoted him as saying: "We revoked the verdicts of the lower and appeal courts because there are no facts, there is no evidence... that can prove the primary charges." Their report also said that one of the three judges on the panel had dissented.
The false document charge related to an accusation Priyanto had falsified Garuda letterhead in order to change the date of his airline ticket so he could board the same flight as Munir.
Priyanto's lawyer, Wirawan Adnan, complained that the two-year jail term was "so that no one could be charged over the detention of my client" and that his client had no need to falsify any letter.
"Why would he need to falsify a letter?... As a Garuda pilot, he can go on board any plane to Singapore. It just doesn't make sense," he told AFP, adding that he would consult with his client on the next legal step they may take.
The flight that Munir died on had departed from Singapore. Under Indonesian law, the state prosecutor could request a retrial over the murder charge but only if fresh evidence can be produced.
Judges had said Priyanto's motive for the murder was to stop Munir from criticising the government and the military.
The activist, who was 38 years old when he died, had made many powerful enemies through his work during and after the rule of dictator Suharto, which ended in May 1998. He had worked to expose military involvement in human rights violations during East Timor's 1999 vote for independence from Indonesia.
Indonesia's Supreme Court has in the past overturned other sensitive cases and is not compelled to divulge its reasons for doing so.
Tommy Suharto, the youngest son of the former president, was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2002 for planning the murder of a judge who had convicted him of corruption. The court later reduced the term to 10 years.
Usman Hamid, coordinator of Kontras, the rights group founded by Munir, said the group was disappointed.
"This verdict is very strange and I think was made in disregard of authentic facts unveiled in court," he told AFP, adding however that he had not seen a copy of the verdict himself yet. "This Supreme Court verdict is fatal, a fatal, legal and political mistake."