Suspected in murders, Indonesian Army stalls inquiry

For more than a month, the Indonesian military's Special Forces Command have been the key suspects in a mine ambush that killed two Americans and one Indonesian.

The August attack occurred on a lonely mountain road in the province of Papua, in the shadow of the world's largest copper and gold mine - owned by the Louisiana-based Freeport McMoRan. The victims: teachers at a Freeport-run school.

However, US and Indonesian investigators say the politically sensitive investigation has stalled. They've uncovered a trail leading back to Kopassus, as the special forces are known, and can go no further.

"We don't have the authority to question soldiers,'' says Brigadier General Raziman Tarigan, the deputy police chief for Papua. "It is in the military's hands."

The world's largest Muslim country has been a focus of the US war on terror since the Al Qaeda-linked October bombing of a nightclub on Bali. The mine attack came as the Bush administration was pushing to resume military relations with Indonesia, severed three years ago. Diplomats now warn that the Freeport investigation looms as the biggest obstacle to new ties and could have grave consequences for military relations between the US and Indonesia.

"Very serious questions are going to have to be answered,'' says a US official. "Until there is a full, transparent investigation of what happened at Freeport, resuming military ties will be extremely difficult."

Kopassus has run so-called black operations for more than 20 years, particularly in conflict areas like Papua, Aceh, and the former province of East Timor, usually without any civilian oversight.

The US broke military relations with Indonesia in 1999, largely because of rampant human-rights abuses - including the military's alleged use of Kopassus operatives to create militias in East Timor that murdered and tortured hundreds of civilians after they voted for independence, according to an Indonesian government investigation.

"[The Freeport] incident must not be seen in isolation: It's part of a troubling pattern of abuse that, if anything, is on the rise," says a Western diplomat in Jakarta.

While Indonesian police have implicated Kopassus in a string of human-rights crimes - from the disappearance and torture of democracy activists in 1998 to the 2001 assassination of Papuan independence leader Theys Eluay - efforts to prosecute soldiers largely have been dismissed as a whitewash by foreign governments.

The military and Kopassus have also been involved in previous operations against Freeport. Freeport executives blamed the military for a 1996 riot near the mine, a charge bolstered by comments of former Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono to a foreign academic in 2000. He said that elements in the military were seeking to underscore their importance by frightening the US firm.

The Indonesian military often demands protection money from big businesses to fund its operations - particularly mining and oil and gas companies, according to executives at four foreign firms in Indonesia.

After the 1996 riot, Freeport built a $35-million base for the military. Similarly, Indonesian police and Western diplomats say, extortion was a probable motive for the August attack.

Freeport makes payments of more than $10 million a year to the Indonesian military, but has been shifting resources to the police since the fall of the Indonesian dictator Suharto - himself a former general - in 1998.

Freeport employees say that in the past year local commanders have complained that their payments were too low. Freeport has also been making payments to Papuan groups with ties to the independence movement, angering the military.

Under Indonesian law, the police handed responsibility for investigating the case to the military more than a month ago. Since then, Mr. Raziman says, the military has shown few signs of commitment to following the trail to Kopassus.

"It's a pity for the police, but the law gives the military the right to investigate and prosecute its own."

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