Jakarta – The Army's Central Military Police commander, Lieutenant General Dodik Wijanarko, says that a joint army (TNI AD) investigation team has yet to find any hard evidence to upgrade the status of the investigation into the fatal shooting of Intan Jaya Pastor Yeremia Zanambani to a criminal investigation.
"Up until today, the team has yet to find hard (bukti kuat) evidence to warrant the investigation process being upgraded to a criminal investigation", said Wijanarko during a press conference at the Army's Military Police Headquarters in Central Jakarta on Thursday November 12.
The joint investigation team, said Wijanarko, is made up of the Army Military Police Headquarters (Puspomad), Army intelligence staff, the Army's Intelligence Centre and the Army's Legal Directorate, which are part of the Cenderawasih/XVII Regional Military Command (Kodam) in Papua.
The team was established by Army Chief-of-Staff General Andika Perkasa one day after the government sanctioned Intan Jaya Joint Fact Finding Team (TGPF) handed the results of its investigation over to the Coordinating Minister for Security, Politics and Legal Affairs, Mahfud MD.
"The join team departed from Jakarta on October 26, 2020 at 01.15 am West Indonesia Time and arrived in Papua at Papua 07.30 East Indonesia Time, and then immediately went to work", said Wijanarko.
So far, he said, the team is still conducting an investigation to try and find evidence. "We asked witnesses, we looked at the crime scene of course, we also of course looked at the forensic [evidence] and so forth", he said.
There are several stages in the investigation into Zanambani's shooting on September 19 that have to be concluded first. One of these is exhuming and conducting an autopsy on Zanambani's body.
"We don't want to wrongly name a suspect, [but] of course determine that that suspect is actually the person who committed and perpetrated the crime", said Wijanarko.
Earlier the government formed the Intan Jaya TGPF to investigate the Zanambani's killing. The result was that they found that a member of the security forces was allegedly involved in the murder of the religious figure.
The results of an investigation by the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) meanwhile found that the perpetrator of Zanambani's killing was Hitadipa sub-district military deputy commander Chief Sergeant Alpius Hasim Madi. (tst/arh)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "TNI AD Sebut Belum Ada Alat Bukti Kuat Penembakan Intan Jaya".]
