Jakarta – Suciwati, widow of slain human rights defender Munir Said Thalib, is seeking to overturn the decision by the Law and Human Rights Ministry to grant remissions to the killer of her husband, an activist says.

"We have filed an official request to the Law and Human Rights Ministry asking for copies of the ministerial decrees, that granted Pollycarpus a number of cuts to his sentence," the chairman of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), Haris Azhar, told The Jakarta Post.

Haris was referring to former pilot Pollycarpus Budihari Prijanto, who was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment in 2008 for the premeditated murder of Munir, Kontras' founder.

According to data compiled by Kontras, the government has reduced Pollycarpus' jail term by almost 25 months through seven remission grants. "The government should have applied stiffer conditions for a human rights convict like Pollycarpus," said Haris

A spokesman for the Law and Human Rights Ministry, Martua Batubara, said the ministry would be ready to face the lawsuit. Munir was died from arsenic poisoning on board a Garuda Indonesia flight to Amsterdam in 2004.