Posted on 11/12/2004 7:06:47 AM PST by dead
A leading human rights campaigner appears to have been killed by arsenic during a flight, Matthew Moore reports from Jakarta.
He survived a firebombing of his house. Now he appears to have been murdered by arsenic poisoning on a flight to Holland.
Munir Said Thalib, 38, became violently ill in Singapore before boarding the second leg of his flight from Jakarta to Schiphol Airport in September. A doctor tried to help but Mr Munir was dead when the aircraft landed.
An autopsy conducted by the Dutch Forensic Institute showed that arsenic killed him, Mr Munir's wife, Suciwati, told the Herald yesterday after police showed her the thick document they had just received.
Mr Munir was regarded as one of Indonesia's most fearless human rights campaigners. He came to prominence in the final days of the Soeharto regime when he exposed the disappearance of dozens of activists, and took up issues of human rights abuses in Papua and East Timor.
The Dutch Government handed a copy of the report on his death to the Indonesian Foreign Ministry on Thursday, along with a request to inform Mr Munir's family as soon as possible. The Dutch paper NRC Handelsblad reported that the Dutch Foreign Office had told the Indonesian Government a criminal investigation was warranted.
Advertisement AdvertisementMs Suciwati said she was called on Thursday night by the senior Minister for Security, Widodo Sucipto, who told her "the family will be informed of the results of the autopsy". She said he had phoned at the request of the President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Ms Suciwati went to Jakarta's police headquarters to demand a copy of the report from the head of the criminal investigation unit, General Suyitno Landung. Indonesian police confirmed the report said Mr Munir died from arsenic poisoning, but refused to give Ms Suciwati a copy. In response she called a media conference, where she wiped away tears as she insisted on her right to know how her husband died.
"We regret the latest information on Munir's autopsy was not given directly to the family, especially to me as his wife."
She said she would be prepared to have her husband's body exhumed if it would help disclose the facts about how he died.
Until the disclosure by the Dutch, it had been assumed Mr Munir had died from illness, possibly related to the one that put him in hospital for a month last year. But the head of Munir's organisation Imparsial, Rachmand Nashidik, said they had long suspected something unusual about Munir's death.
"Before going to Holland he was in good health and had a medical check-up. Moreover, we met with the doctor with him on the Garuda flight who said that while he had diarrhoea, he was surprised he had died."
Last year, a bomb exploded on the veranda of Mr Munir's house and he was regularly threatened.
The London-based Indonesian human rights group Tapol issued a statement saying revelations of the arsenic confirmed fears he had been assassinated.
"On many occasions, Munir fearlessly exposed the role of the powerful Indonesian armed forces in acts of repression, incurring their wrath on many occasions. Some senior officers may well have seen Munir as their most dangerous foe.
"During the many years we have campaigned for human rights, this is the first time, to our knowledge, that an Indonesian human rights activist has been murdered in this way though many others have suffered horrific fates in the course of their work. That this should have occurred several years after the collapse of the Soeharto regime makes the tragedy even more chilling."
A leading human rights lawyer, Todung Mulya Lubis, said the matter was of such concern police should include human rights activists in their investigation to ensure the truth was known about Munir's death.
"This is a very dangerous precedent, dangerous for those who are critical towards the Government, towards injustice and towards human rights violations. If it's a political assassination, a political murder, it could happen to anyone, to anyone politically opposed to the Government and therefore we demand civil society be included."
Mr Munir flew out for Holland on September 7 to study humanitarian law for his masters degree. In Singapore he complained of feeling unwell and began vomiting violently on the second leg of the flight to Europe. He was reportedly in agony when he died shortly before reaching Amsterdam.
National Police Chief DaI Bachtiar said a police would go to Holland shortly to study the case with Dutch investigators.
I hope the flight crew brown bags it.
BTTT
That was my initial reaction, but then I read the article. The guy was Indonesian & the Dutch connection is coincidental. Gotz nothin' to do with it other than when his plane landed in Holland, he was in no condition to use the other half of his roundtrip ticket...in the passenger compartment, that is.
This man dies in agony...and Arafat, by contrast, slips into a coma and dies painlessly? Hm. But which of them will be in agony from now ON? That's a thought to ponder.
Are you aware of the Muslim Christian conflict in Papua and East Timor. Probably not because the MSM and UN don't consider it important when the ragheads are winning. (IIRC when the Christians started winning the UN disarmed them and left. One of their "sucesses".
This guy is from "a human rights activist", most likely some sort of moslem backing globo-liberal.
Hes from Indonesia, the largest moslem nation in Asia.
He was somehow involved in East Timor, the site of a moslem uprising.
There have been numerous threads here about the terror organizations with offices in London, a London "human rights" organization speaks out.
He was on his way to Holland, a hive of liberalism, because he wanted to get a Masters in "humanitarian law", had the dye of liberalism not fully reached the roots of his brain yet?
Unless we know for a fact that this guy was some sort of non-moslem smuggling non-moslems from conflict, then I think we need to consider that it may have been a non-moslem element that did the deed.
Are you aware of the Muslim Christian conflict in Papua and East Timor.
Yes, I am. The East Timor story gets quite a lot of play on some university campuses (or, at least the one where I attended in a predominately Catholic area), which is where I first heard about it 4-5 years ago. You're right--it's a grossly under-reported story.
I should say the Muslimes are assassinating dissenters and critics and opposers. Nothing new, I know.
True. But since Thalib was muslim, it's also possible that the muslims didn't do it. Noting that Thalib was reportedly 'highly critical' of the Indonesian military, the list of suspects could be fairly comprehensive.
Indonesia is the former colonial power in Indonesia. the realationship between the two is more than coincidental. Just like folks in the former French colonies go to Paris to study, and those from the ex British colonies go to UK or America, it is natural for Indonesians to head to Holland.
Arsenic poisoning works in days, not hours, unless they overdosed. Thus in all probability it was a pre-flight ingestion.
Jason Bourne did it.
My point was that he wasn't killed because he was a Dutch citizen because he wasn't a Dutch citizen. And, so far as we know, he wasn't killed because he was travelling to Holland.
Ping
One man dead this time, next, it will be the entire plane load of passengers.
I don't think so. East Timor is a Christian region under assault by muslims.
Indonesia was formerly a Dutch colony.
Indonesia was formerly a Dutch colony.
So, precisely what did the Dutch have to do w/ Thalib getting dead?
BTTT
How much arsenic would it take to kill this quickly, and why couldn't it be tasted. Normally, heavy metal poisoning is fairly slow.
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