Jakarta (AsiaNews/Agencies) - An Indonesian court has found a pilot guilty of the murder of a leading human rights activist on a flight to Amsterdam last year and sentenced him to 14 years in prison.
Judges ruled that Pollycarpus Priyanto was guilty of lacing food served to activist Munir Thalib with a lethal dose of arsenic.The incident occurred during a Garuda Indonesia flight to Amsterdam via Singapore in September last year.
"Defendant Pollycarpus Priyanto has been proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt of taking part in the premeditated murder and of falsifying documents," chief judge Cicut Sutiarso said.
The judges said there was evidence that in plotting the murder, the pilot made frequent telephone contact with another person whose identity was still unknown.
Priyanto said he had been made a scapegoat.
"I reject all the charges and the verdict. I didn't do it," he said after the judges read their verdict.
"I'm a scapegoat."
Mr Munir was a fearless proponent of democracy and critic of the Indonesian military. He was prominent in the campaign against the role of the Indonesian military in repression in East Timor. In 1999 he was appointed to a United Nations Commission of Inquiry charged with investigating human rights violations on the island.
