Jakarta – A telephone conversation between acquitted murder suspect Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto and former Garuda Indonesia President Indra Setiawan emerged Wednesday as the latest intriguing development in the review into Pollycarpus' quashed conviction for the murder of human rights activist Munir Said Thalib.

The recording, which was played for the first time in public during the court session, featured Pollycarpus attempting to calm Indra down after he expressed personal fears over the progress of investigations into Munir's death.

"I'm afraid there is somebody else who saw the letter from A and will use it to set a trap for me," Indra said in the recording of a May 2007 call made to Pollycarpus from his cell at National Police headquarters.

Indra has been in jail since April 2007 and could be charged with conspiracy to murder based on a letter he issued in August 2004 assigning Pollycarpus to act as an aviation security officer on the Garuda flight to Amsterdam on which Munir died.

Indra said he issued the letter after receiving written instructions from Deputy Chairman of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) M. As'ad. He said a copy of the instructions was sent to the State Ministry for State Enterprises.

Indra said in the recording that even though his copy had disappeared from his car in a Jakarta parking lot in December 2004, he was concerned the ministry copy could be produced by people interested in implicating him in Munir's murder.

Pollycarpus replied by telling Indra not to worry, saying all copies of the BIN order had already disappeared. "Besides, the people working in the ministry are all our people," he said.

Pollycarpus added that new evidence being presented in the case review was fabricated. "It's just a political game so the SBY administration will not be disturbed," he said.

He added that Chief Justice Bagir Manan and the Supreme Court "are all our people", as well as most state officials. "They are all on our side," he said. "So you don't have to worry, this is just temporary," Pollycarpus said.

During the phone call, Pollycarpus also told Indra that everything would be alright as long as he was consistent with his denials that either of them had anything to do with the murder.

Pollycarpus, who appeared surprised in court on hearing the recording, continued to insist he had nothing to do with BIN and the murder.

During the same hearing, another witness, Raden Mohammad Patma Anwar, otherwise known as Ucok, was questioned by Pollycarpus' defense lawyer on his position at the intelligence agency.

Ucok replied by saying that the agency's chairman, the late Arie J. Kumaat, recruited him to monitor the activities of non-government organizations in Indonesia, including the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, of which Munir was one of the founders.

Ucok denied the accusation that he had been ordered to kill Munir, despite an earlier police dossier containing his admission under questioning that he received such an order from a senior BIN official.

Another witness, Raymond Latuihamallo, also known as Ongen, also denied most of the statements attributed to him in his police dossier, saying that a police investigator, Mathius Salempang, had forced him to sign it.

He denied his earlier statement that he saw Pollycarpus carrying two cups containing drinks at the Coffee Bean Cafe in Singapore's Changi Airport and saw Pollycarpus chatting with Munir. Ongen said in court he did not know who Pollycarpus was at that time.

Munir died of arsenic poisoning on Sept. 7, 2004. Initially it was suspected that he had been poisoned on board Garuda flight 974 from Jakarta to Amsterdam, but the prosecutors later opened up the possibility that he could have been poisoned during the flight's stopover in Singapore.

Asrini Utami Putri, one of the passengers on the flight, told the court she saw Pollycarpus, Munir and a longhaired man talking at the Coffee Bean Cafe during the stopover at Changi. When asked by the prosecution if the longhaired man was Ongen, Asrini nodded.

The court hearing will resume on Aug. 29 to hear testimonies from Mathius Salempang and expert witnesses.