Indonesian activist died of poisoning: investigator

Dutch forensic investigators have concluded a leading Indonesian human rights activist who died on a flight to Amsterdam in September was poisoned with arsenic, the prosecutor's office said on Friday. Dutch police ordered an autopsy after Munir, a vocal critic of former Indonesian strongman Suharto, died just hours before his flight landed at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on September 7.
"The Dutch Forensics Institute last week ruled that he was poisoned with arsenic," the office said in a statement.
Dutch prosecutors do not have jurisdiction to launch a criminal investigation and passed the autopsy report to the Indonesian authorities, who said they were looking into the death of the 38-year-old lawyer.
Indonesia's police chief General Da'i Bachtiar told reporters in Jakarta a police team would fly to the Netherlands.
Munir's wife, Suciwati, urged the Indonesian authorities to provide her with the autopsy results and called on the national human rights commission to join the probe.
"Don't ask me how I feel, but most importantly I want this to be resolved thoroughly," she said.
Human rights worker Usmad Hamid said investigators may have to exhume Munir's grave.
Munir's now defunct Kontras group was a leading force examining charges of injustice by Suharto's regime. He later spearheaded efforts to bring to justice those behind a spree of kidnappings and torture of anti-Suharto activists in 1998.
Lawyers for the elderly Suharto, who lives in a wealthy area of the capital, Jakarta, have so far managed to keep their client out of court, saying he is too ill to face trial.
Munir died on the day the Indonesian parliament approved setting up a truth and reconciliation panel to investigate killings and abductions during the Suharto era.
Munir also criticised the military in separatist hotspots such as Aceh and Papua and had spoken of unknown assailants throwing grenades at his Jakarta office.
His human rights campaigning was recognised with several awards including the Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the alternative Nobel prize.
Munir was on his way to the Netherlands to study for a master's degree under a scholarship sponsored by the Dutch government. Indonesia was a Dutch colony until 1949 and the two countries still have close ties.