Indonesia's democracy tested by activist's death

JAKARTA, Tuesday (Reuters) An Indonesian murder mystery set in the skies and involving spies, arsenic poisoning and the national airline is becoming a dramatic test of democracy in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

A few years ago, under the rule of iron-fisted former president Suharto, authorities would likely have clamped down on news of the killing of Munir Said Thalib, 38, a democracy activist who died aboard a flight to Amsterdam last September.

The motive for his death remains cloaked in mystery, but the events surrounding it are slowly becoming clearer following a probe ordered by Indonesia's new government. An autopsy by Dutch police revealed arsenic poisoning, and the Indonesian probe implicated employees of national airline Garuda and officials of the state intelligence agency (BIN), although its former chief strongly denies involvement.

The saga serves as an illustration of how much has changed in Indonesia, but also how reforms still have some way to go.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a former general who became the country's first directly elected president last October, appointed a commission made up of leading human rights activists and former police officials to probe Munir's death.

In June, that team presented him with a report implicating top intelligence officials, say members of the team who wrote it.

"They are high ranking officials," commission member Usman Hamid, a member of the Kontras human rights group formerly headed by Munir, told Reuters. Earlier, three Garuda employees were arrested after a police investigation.

Although no action has yet been taken on any intelligence officials following the commission's report, and details are not yet known of who it names and how it links them to the case, one top official has gone public to deny any connection.

"Frankly and honestly, I had nothing to do with Munir's death. I never asked anyone to kill him," Hendropriyono, the former chief of the powerful national intelligence agency BIN, said in a half-page interview in the Jakarta Post last week.

Hendropriyono, a close ally of Yudhoyono's predecessor Megawati Sukarnoputri, retired from BIN late last year after Yudhoyono defeated Megawati in a run-off election. The public comments from commission members and Hendropriyono would have been near unthinkable in the Suharto era, when for members of Indonesia's elite "face", or pride, was paramount and public accountability and open debate a rare commodity.

"Five years ago it never would have even been possible to insinuate that the head of BIN might be involved," said Sidney Jones, an Indonesia expert at the International Crisis Group.

"It says a lot about how far Indonesia has come that an independent team has been able to work, granted under severe restraints, but in a way that has allowed its findings to reach the public in a pretty unadorned fashion."

Although it is not legally binding, the commission's report recommends the police further investigate top BIN officials and others for alleged involvement in a conspiracy to kill Munir.

Whether times have changed enough for things to go much further remains to be seen.