Garuda Chief Jailed over Killing
AP | Feb. 12, 2008
On February 11, a Jakarta district court sentenced a former director of Indonesia's national airline to 12 months in prison for his part in the midair killing of a human rights activist.
Indra Setiawan, a former chief executive of Garuda Indonesia, was convicted as an accessory in the 2004 murder of Munir Said Thalib, in a case seen as a critical test of the country's ability to break from more than three decades of impunity for loyalists and cronies during the rule of late dictator Suharto.
"By God, I'm not guilty," Setiawan told the court. He vowed to appeal.
Thalib, a vocal critic of Indonesia's military, died in September 2004 while flying from Jakarta to Amsterdam after ingesting a fatal dose of arsenic.
The court said Setiawan had abused his position to enable Polycarpus Priyanto to board the flight and give Munir an arsenic-laced drink during a stopover at Singapore's airport.
Priyanto was convicted of premeditated murder in the case last month.
Setiawan earlier told the court that the national spy agency, known as BIN, had asked him to put Priyanto, an off-duty pilot, on the flight from Jakarta to Singapore as a security agent.