[nasional_list] [ppiindia] A Widow Who Won't Let Indonesia Forget
- From: "Ambon" <sea@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 06:03:13 +0100
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**http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/international/asia/27indo.html
A Widow Who Won't Let Indonesia Forget
By JANE PERLEZ and RAYMOND BONNER
Published: January 27, 2006
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 26 - In a conference room of the national police
headquarters here, Patsy Spier last week once again relived the attack that
robbed her of her husband on a Saturday afternoon in 2002 in remote Papua
Province.
Dita Alangkara/AP
Patsy Spier with Indonesian National Police Chief Gen. Sutanto.
In more than six hours of questioning by Indonesian police investigators, she
described how attackers fired into the convoy carrying her, her husband and
eight other Americans up a mountain road inside the concession of
Freeport-McMoRan, an American mining company. Then she repeated her pitch for
justice.
"I emphasized that whoever carried this out knew what they were doing," Mrs.
Spier said in an interview last week, when she returned to Jakarta at the time
of a breakthrough in the case with the detention of eight suspects. "It wasn't
just a few minutes, it wasn't just a gun getting away, it was repeated shots.
They were going to kill someone that day."
The ambush killed her husband, Rickey Lynn Spier, another American teacher,
Edwin Burgon, and an Indonesian teacher, Bambang Riwanto, and snarled efforts
by the Bush administration to strengthen military relations with Indonesia. It
also raised questions about payments by Freeport, based in New Orleans, to the
Indonesian Army, which patrolled the road, and whose soldiers are suspected of
involvement. Not least, the case placed Mrs. Spier, who will turn 48 Monday, at
the center of strained United States relations with Indonesia over the
incident, making her an accidental ambassador for justice on a nearly four-year
quest to untangle who was behind the killings.
In Washington, Mrs. Spier's mettle - she has made 17 trips from her home in
Colorado - won her access to high officials, including John D. Ashcroft, during
his tenure as attorney general. In Jakarta last week, Mrs. Spier, a former
Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone who later traveled the world teaching
with her husband, met with the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
their second encounter.
Widows with horrific stories of violence abroad are not unusual in Washington.
But Mrs. Spier has struck a chord. She said she tracked down every lead to seek
a full investigation of the case, which at times seemed at risk of dying, amid
resistance by the Indonesian government to the F.B.I.
Even today, the pursuit of the connections the case might have with Indonesia's
military is likely to clash with the warming of military ties between the Bush
administration and Indonesia in the last 18 months.
"If Patsy hadn't stuck with it, I'm not at all sure we'd be where we are
today," Matthew P. Daley, a former deputy assistant secretary of state and one
of the first people she called on, said last week.
This month, the F.B.I. arranged for the surrender in Papua of 12 men in the
killings, including Anthonius Wamang, a member of a Papuan separatist group,
who was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington in June 2004.
Four of the men were freed, and the others are in custody in Jakarta. Those in
custody are expected to be charged, lawyers in the case said. One of the
suspects is 14, another 15, a list provided by a Papuan human rights group
says. All are supporters of the Papuan separatist movement, a police
investigator said.
The arrests and the promise by the Indonesians of a fair trial still leave
unanswered who planned the attacks, what the motives were and whether
Indonesian soldiers were involved, Mrs. Spier said. To get those answers, she
said she had asked President Yudhoyono to allow the F.B.I. to continue in the
case and to question the suspects to ensure "a credible investigation." The
president "gave his commitment," she said, although the national police chief,
Gen. Sutanto, said last week that the F.B.I.'s role was over.
"The police involved in the investigation still believe the military was
involved," said an Indonesian investigator who gave The New York Times official
transcripts of witness interviews. "But this involves relations between two
countries. It will be difficult for the police to dare to say the military was
involved."
The evidence of military involvement is largely circumstantial. Mr. Wamang was
close to Indonesian military units in Papua, and was paid by the military for
trips to Jakarta, the police investigator said.
After his capture, Mr. Wamang told the police he got the bullets from a senior
Indonesian soldier, his lawyer, Albert Rumbekwan, said. The F.B.I. said in a
report to a Congressional panel that the assailants had used the same type of
automatic rifles used by Indonesia's military.
The ambush occurred between military checkpoints that are only five miles
apart. The road falls away at almost an 80-degree angle into a mountainous
valley, making it almost impossible for the attackers to have gotten into
position without the acquiescence of soldiers on the road, the Indonesian
police investigator said, a conclusion shared by Mrs. Spier and American
investigators.
The soldiers on the road did not respond to the attack for more than 30
minutes, according to Mrs. Spier and the F.B.I. investigation. Soldiers came to
the rescue after a Freeport executive, Andrew J. Neale, stumbled across the
shooting as he was driving down the road and went to the military post for
help. He said he had heard "continuous shooting," an official transcript of his
questioning by Indonesian police says.
The ambush angered Congress and delayed the renewal of American money for
military training for Indonesia for more than two years.
But over the objections of some members of Congress, the Bush administration
resumed the training in February 2005 after the indictment of Mr. Wamang. The
training had been suspended in 1992 after Indonesian security forces massacred
civilians in East Timor in 1991.
In November, the administration waived curbs on lethal arms sales, saying that
Indonesia was "a voice of moderation in the Islamic world" and that the F.B.I.
had received renewed cooperation in the case.
The preliminary Indonesian police report suggested that a motivation for the
attack was a threat by Freeport, which runs the world's largest gold mine in
Papua, to cut its payments to Indonesian soldiers. Freeport was giving
Indonesian military officers such benefits as nights at the Sheraton hotel,
airline tickets and cash, company documents provided to The New York Times
show.
In 1998 through 2004, the company gave individual officers and units more than
$20 million in cash and benefits, the documents show.
Mr. Spier, the two other teachers who were killed and Mrs. Spier, who was shot
in the rib and suffered shrapnel wounds to her back and a kidney, worked at the
school run by Freeport for the children of its employees. If the shootings were
motivated by the soldiers' wanting more money from Freeport, Mrs. Spier said,
she would seek to change laws on corporate behavior abroad.
"If the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act needs to be changed, I want to change
it," she said.
She said she expected to attend the trial in Jakarta, though a date is
uncertain. If convicted, the suspects could face the death penalty. "There's a
death penalty here," she said. "They knew what they were doing. They chose to
kill. The consequences are there."
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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