Camelia Pasandaran – Convicted murder Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto could walk free in a matter of months after the Supreme Court further reduced his 20-year prison sentence for the assassination of human rights activist Munir Said Thalib on new medical evidence presented in a case review.
Attorney Mohamad Assegaf said the court reduced his client's sentence to 14 years in prison after medical experts cast doubt on whether Pollycarpus poisoned Munir's drink during a Jakarta-to-Singapore flight.
"The indictment stated that the poison was put into the orange juice during a flight between Jakarta and Singapore," Assegaf said. "The expert said that if that was true, Munir would've been very ill when the plane reached Singapore's Changi airport. The fact is Munir was healthy during [his] transit at Changi."
The prosecution later switched the narrative, saying Munir was poisoned in Singapore, not on the flight, the attorney said.
"The prosecutor said during the trial [at the Central Jakarta District Court] that he was poisoned during the flight, but when they filed the appeal they said he was poisoned at Changi airport," Assegaf said.
Pollycarpus is now eligible to file for parole in one to two months.
Munir died on an international flight to the Netherlands on Sept. 7, 2004. The court convicted Pollycarpus of the murder, saying that the former Garuda Indonesia pilot offered Munir his business-class seat on a Jakarta-to-Singapore flight after tainting the man's orange juice with lethal levels of arsenic.
The human rights activist then fell ill during his Singapore-to-Amsterdam flight. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. Forensic investigators discovered near three times the lethal dose of arsenic in his body.
Munir, the founder of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), was a vocal critic of the Indonesian Military (TNI) in the early days of the Reform era, accusing soldiers of human-rights offenses, and investigating disappearances during Suharto's New Order regime.
Activists have accused the government of failing to properly investigate the assassination. The police investigation stopped at Pollycarpus despite accusations that he was acting on orders from Indonesia's National Intelligence Agency (BIN).
BIN deputy chief Muchdi PR was named a suspect but not convicted. Pollycarpus was convicted of murder in 2005. He was freed one year later on a sentence reduction after the Supreme Court reduced his prison term to two years.
In 2008 Pollycarpus was jailed again after the court conducted a judicial review of the case and sentenced the man to 20 years in prison. He has received 11 sentence cuts, totaling three years, three months, 25 days, and would be eligible for parole in mere months after the most recent reduction.
Pollycarpus received the remissions for what has been described as model behavior. He is actively involved in social life at Sukabumi's Sukamiskin Penitentiary, participating in blood drives and the Boy Scouts.
Human rights groups criticized the sentence reductions, calling the latest remission a clear sign that the government has failed to ensure justice in the case.
"There's secret effort to only charge Polly for the murder while letting the mastermind go free," said Haris Azhar, coordinator at Kontras. "And at the same time Polly gets so many sentence cuts and privilege."
Munir's wife said she no longer expects the Indonesian government to provide justice for her slain husband.
"After nine years of striving to get justice, I don't think it is an easy thing to get given the fact that the country is full of bad people instead of good people in the state institutions," Suciwati Munir said. "The president is slow in handling human rights violations.
"Seeing how bad the system is in this country, I can't expect to get much justice for my husband."