Attorney General Basrief Arief said on Wednesday that all legal measures to bring the murderers of Munir Said Thalib to justice have been exhausted.

Meanwhile, activists rallied at the State Palace to mark the seventh anniversary of the demise of the nation’s celebrated human rights advocate.

“It’s done. We have done everything we can under all the authority the law gives us,” Basrief told reporters at his office.

Basrief said that the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) would not contest a Supreme Court ruling that acquitted former spymaster Muchdi Purwoprandjono of wrongdoing in the killing of Munir in September 2004.

Muchdi, who was deputy chairman of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) when Munir was slain on a Garuda Indonesia flight to Amsterdam, was arrested in 2008 for allegedly masterminding what activists described as “state terrorism”.

The arrest was made amid a public outcry on the prosecution of Pollycarpus Budihari Prijanto, who was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment for poisoning Munir after the AGO contested a Supreme Court ruling exonerating him of murder. Muchdi was acquitted at trial.

Critics have said that Pollycarpus, a former Garuda pilot, was a pawn in a scheme to murder Munir, one of the founders of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras). Pollycarpus has filed a petition to overturn his conviction at the Central Jakarta District Court.

Basrief said the AGO would not contest Muchdi’s acquittal, claiming that the Criminal Code prohibited prosecutors from filing a case review to challenge a Supreme Court ruling.

Apparently contradicting Basrief’s statement, the AGO has previously filed several case reviews challenging Supreme Court rulings, including its case review request of the Supreme Court decision in 2006 that acquitted Pollycarpus of murder.

Activists say that the results of the review, which determined that Pollycarpus was guilty of Munir’s premeditated murder, set a precedent for the AGO to contest Muchdi’s verdict.

“Whether the AGO is allowed to file a case review will be always disputed. We must also assess how significant the importance of filing the review is and consider every other aspect, especially state security,” Basrief said.

Activists from dozens of human rights NGOs rallied in front of the State Palace on Wednesday to
mark Munir’s death and draw attention to the President’s failure to publish the results of the investigation of Munir’s killing as previously promised.

The rally ended in a ruckus, as activists sparred with police officers, leaving some of the protesters with minor injuries, Haris Azhar from the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) said. (sat)