Word: papua
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that no one would unravel the mystery of why these teachers were targeted on a mountain road leading to the giant Grasberg mine, which is run by P.T. Freeport Indonesia (PTFI), a subsidiary of New Orleans-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold. The military blamed the attack on the Free Papua Movement, a ragtag group of Papua rebels fighting a desultory war to free the province from Indonesian rule, but produced scant evidence to back the claim. Meanwhile, relatives of the slain teachers have grown increasingly frustrated by the inability of local police and the U.S. government to find answers...
...that may shed some light on the case. A preliminary police-investigation document obtained by TIME posits that members of the Indonesian military?who were supposed to protect miners, international teachers and other expats connected to the Grasberg mine?may have been behind the killings, not the separatist Free Papua Movement...
...evidence cited by police is at best circumstantial but intriguing. Investigators found 100 spent shells in the area of the attack, yet the poorly armed rebels are not known to waste precious ammunition. In addition, the military produced the body of an unidentified Papua man shot by soldiers the day after the ambush, and claimed it was one of the assailants. But an examination of the corpse revealed that not only had the man been dead longer than the military insisted, he also had a medical condition?massive enlargement of the testicles?that would have made it difficult...
...Indonesian soldiers have been accused of murder before. Last week, during a tribunal on the 2001 killing of Papua independence leader Theys Eluay, an army officer admitted that Eluay had been strangled to death by a private. The officer testified that the private had been ordered to pressure Eluay to stop agitating for independence. The controversy over the killing of the teachers is now intensifying questions about the dependability of Indonesia's armed forces. At the same time it complicates relations between Indonesia and the Bush Administration, which wants to preserve ties to the world's largest Muslim nation...
...Nevertheless Washington has made it clear in recent weeks that it is determined to get to the truth. In December, George W. Bush sent a personal envoy to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri to underline the importance he attached to finding the culprits in the Papua killings. With Megawati's consent, four FBI agents were dispatched to Indonesia, arriving in Jakarta on Jan. 23 and traveling to Papua earlier this month to begin an inquiry into the attack. The FBI has conducted two previous probes into the matter but lacked the authority until now to complete a thorough investigation...