Ulma Haryanto – A court on Wednesday began reviewing the case of a former Garuda Indonesia pilot jailed for killing an activist, with the convict submitting papers he said proved the victim was poisoned long after the airman left the plane.
The former pilot, Pollycarpus Priyanto, said forensic evidence showed that rights advocate Munir Said Thalib was given arsenic while the plane was passing over Vietnam, during a connecting flight on which Pollycarpus claimed he did not work.
"I was not on that leg of the flight," he said before Wednesday's hearing at the Central Jakarta District Court.
His lawyers handed in five documents, including Jakarta-Singapore-Amsterdam flight logs and witness testimony transcripts stating Pollycarpus went straight to the crew bus after landing in the city-state.
He cited earlier calculations by a Seattle forensic lab that showed Munir was poisoned nine hours before he died while flying over Hungary, roughly two hours before reaching Schipol Airport.
Munir had won a scholarship to study at Utrecht University. The connecting flight from Singapore to the Netherlands took 12 hours and 25 minutes.
"If we use that calculation, Munir was poisoned 25 to 40 minutes after the plane took off from Singapore. By the time, it must have been over Vietnam," Pollycarpus said.
Defense lawyer Muhammad Assegaf also pointed to a discrepancy in the 2008 Supreme Court verdict, which put the place of death as Changi International Airport instead of on the airplane, as stated in the indictment.
"The location of the crime was where two flight attendants offered him a welcome drink," Assegaf said. "In the Supreme Court ruling, [the location] changes. This should not be allowed."
The lawyer also argued that Pollycarpus deserved to be released after the Supreme Court in 2008 acquitted former State Intelligence Agency (BIN) officer Muchdi Purwopranjono, the murder's alleged mastermind.
Prosecutors said the BIN official wanted revenge after Munir's human rights complaints cost Muchdi his Army post in 1998.
On Wednesday, presiding Judge Bagus Irawan rejected one of the documents, saying it needed to be notarized. The review was adjourned until June 28.
Choirul Anam, a member of the Committee of Action and Solidarity for Munir (Kasum), accused Pollycarpus, who was serving a 20-year sentence, of recycling old arguments shot down during his trial in 2005-08.
"What counts is the first reaction, not the time of death. Witnesses said Munir felt uneasy five minutes after boarding," he said. "Even though Pollycarpus claimed he checked in together with the other crew, hotel logs showed that he came in the last."