Retired Major General Muchdi Purwopranjono, a former deputy of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) has been acquitted of ordering the murder of Indonesian human rights lawyer Munir. Judges ruled that the senior official could not be ‘proved legally and convincingly’ to have ordered the killing of a man who was seen as a threat to the Indonesian government.

Munir died from arsenic poisoning on a commercial airliner en route to the Netherlands in September 2004. Two men had subsequently been convicted in connection with Munir’s killing, but the trial of Muchdi was the first time to discover who first planned and ordered the crime.

The general’s acquittal was a continuation of the unfortunate fact that since 1998 and the fall of Soeharto, no Indonesian general has been successfully prosecuted for a human rights abuse. Human Rights activists outside and within Indonesia are disappointed and angered by the verdict. A chance to show that generals in Indonesia are not above the law, and that the actions of senior security officials are subject to accountability; the trial’s outcome has been a disappointment to Munir’s fellow Indonesian supporters of human rights.The International Commission on Human Rights has urged the Indonesian authorities to do more to bring Munir’s killers to justice.

Muchdi has been implicated in other serious human rights abuses within Indonesia, including the ‘disappearance’ of students calling for the ouster of Soeharto in 1998 when Muchdi was head of the army’s special forces unit (Kopassus). Indeed, his military career was ended in 1998 when a military court found Kopassus soldiers of abducting activists, thirteen of whom have never been found. Prosecution at the trial suggested that Muchdi’s motive for ordering Munir’s death was Munir’s role in presenting evidence against him leading to his 1998 dismissal.

Munir was best known for his work as founder and director of human rights group Kontras, and at the time of his death was the director of human rights group Imparsial. As a lawyer he had represented many human rights victims and activists, regularly speaking out for justice in the face of intimidation and death threats.