JAKARTA, Indonesia — A former Indonesian intelligence chief was cleared Wednesday of playing any role in the fatal mid-flight poisoning of the country’s most prominent human-rights activist and a symbol of defiance in the face of authoritarian rule.
Critics called the ruling proof that courts are still unable to hold high officials accountable a decade after the country embraced democracy.
Munir Thalib was poisoned on a flight to Amsterdam in 2004 after an off-duty pilot with the national carrier, Garuda, boarded his plane posing as an undercover security agent and slipped him arsenic.
The murder case became a critical test of Indonesia’s willingness to come to grips with the authoritarian legacy of the late dictator Suharto. Thalib’s efforts to expose atrocities had made him an icon in the struggle against the dictatorship.
