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Pilot guilty of activist murder | Pilot guilty of activist murder |
(41 minutes later) | |
A former pilot has been jailed for 20 years for murdering Indonesian rights activist Munir Thalib - reversing an earlier ruling quashing his conviction. | |
Pollycarpus Priyanto was jailed for 14 years in 2005, but had his conviction overturned 10 months later. | |
Indonesia's Supreme Court has now reversed that decision - reinstating his initial conviction and increasing his sentence to 20 years. | |
Munir was poisoned with arsenic in 2004 on board a flight to Amsterdam. | |
The death of the campaigner, who had helped to expose rights abuses by the security services, caused an international outcry. | |
Munir's widow, Suciwati, said the verdict did not go far enough. | |
"This is what he deserves, but I wish he got a longer punishment," she told AFP news agency. | |
"What's more important is to follow up on the intelligence people behind him - [Priyanto] didn't act on his own." | |
Mastermind plea | |
The presiding judge said Priyanto - a former pilot with national carrier Garuda Indonesia - had been found guilty of premeditated murder and forgery. | |
The decision followed a judicial review ordered by the prosecution after new evidence emerged during trials of Priyanto's alleged accomplices. | |
The BBC's Lucy Williamson, in Jakarta, said the evidence had suggested links between Priyanto and the state intelligence agency. | |
Testimony included eyewitness accounts of Priyanto drinking with Munir during his journey to Europe. | |
The head of Kontras - a human rights organisation that has been pressing for resolution of the case - said the decision gave them new hope. | The head of Kontras - a human rights organisation that has been pressing for resolution of the case - said the decision gave them new hope. |
But the group said the legal process should not stop until the plan's mastermind was brought to justice. | But the group said the legal process should not stop until the plan's mastermind was brought to justice. |
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