Dean Yates, Jakarta – FBI agents have taken evidence from last year's killing of two American schoolteachers in Indonesia's rebellious Papua province back to the United States, just as US lawmakers turn up the heat over the murders.
Police spokesman Zainuri Lubis told Reuters on Friday the FBI team, put at five by police, visited Papua during more than two weeks in Indonesia. He said the FBI would do forensic tests on the evidence, although he did not know what was taken.
The United States has warned Jakarta over the ramifications should it fail to cooperate in resolving what political analysts say has become the most sensitive issue in US-Indonesian ties.
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives moved to block Jakarta from receiving military training assistance funds, known as IMET, complaining it had conducted a lax investigation of the August 2002 attack in Papua that also killed an Indonesian.
Analysts have said Indonesia's cooperation with the FBI, partly by allowing enough evidence to be taken out, could be critical to determining what next steps might be taken. "They took evidence needed from the field. They have taken the evidence back to the US for forensic tests," Lubis said.
The FBI team, on its second visit, left two or three days ago. The US embassy in Jakarta confirmed the agents had gone, but said it could not comment on an ongoing investigation.
Plenty is at stake over the ambush, when gunmen sprayed a convoy of mainly American schoolteachers and their families with gunfire near a giant mine operated by US-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. No one has been charged over the killings.
According to US Congressional documents seen by Reuters on Friday, the incident "appears likely to have been perpetrated at least in part by members of the Indonesian military".
The military, which provides the main security for the mine, has blamed Papuan rebels and repeatedly denied any role. "Our investigation shows that up to now there was no involvement of TNI members," military chief Endriartono Sutarto told reporters on Friday, referring to the Indonesian military. He brushed off the blocked IMET officer training.
Indonesian police have previously said some weapons used were of the same type as those carried by troops stationed nearby, but that it was too early to point fingers at the military.
Some Papuan human rights groups say military elements could have staged the ambush to discredit the rebels or get higher payment for their security role at Freeport. The teachers worked at a school serving Freeport expats.
The US House vote blocks less than $1 million from the International Military Education and Training program for fiscal 2004. Some $400,000 for IMET has been passed for 2003 but not been disbursed. Analysts said that could now also be held up. Although small, human rights groups say reinstating IMET would be seen as an endorsement of the Indonesian military.
Fiscal 2003 IMET would be the first since it was cut in the early 1990s over violence in East Timor. Overall military ties were largely severed in 1999 after East Timor's bloody vote to break from Indonesian rule in that year. The chill in military ties following East Timor had only begun to improve through cooperation in the war on terrorism.