The ambush killed her husband, Ricky Lynn Spier; another American teacher, Edwin Burgon; and an Indonesian teacher, Bambang Riwanto. Patsy Spier was shot in the ribs and suffered shrapnel wounds to her back and a kidney. All worked at the school run by Freeport for the children of its employees. The attack snarled efforts by the Bush administration to strengthen military relations with Indonesia. It also raised questions about payments by Freeport, based in New Orleans, to the Indonesian Army, which patrolled the road. Some of its soldiers are suspected of involvement.
Sierra Leone RPCV Patsy Spier's long quest for justice in Indonesia
A widow's long quest for justice in Indonesia American pursues answers in '02 deaths
Jan 28, 2006 - International Herald Tribune
In a conference room of the national police headquarters here, Patsy Spier once again relived the attack that robbed her of her husband on a Saturday afternoon in 2002 in remote Papua Province.
In more than six hours of questioning by Indonesian police investigators this past week, she described how attackers fired into the convoy carrying her, her husband and eight other Americans up a mountain road. They were inside the territorial concession of Freeport-McMoRan, an American mining company.
And she repeated her call for justice.
"I emphasized that whoever carried this out knew what they were doing," Spier said in an interview here. She returned to Jakarta at the time of a breakthrough in the case with the detention of eight suspects. The motive has not been established.
"It wasn't just a few minutes, it wasn't just a gun getting away, it was repeated shots. They were going to kill someone that day," she said.
The ambush killed her husband, Ricky Lynn Spier; another American teacher, Edwin Burgon; and an Indonesian teacher, Bambang Riwanto. Patsy Spier was shot in the ribs and suffered shrapnel wounds to her back and a kidney. All worked at the school run by Freeport for the children of its employees. The attack snarled efforts by the Bush administration to strengthen military relations with Indonesia. It also raised questions about payments by Freeport, based in New Orleans, to the Indonesian Army, which patrolled the road. Some of its soldiers are suspected of involvement.
Not least, the case placed Spier, who turns 48 this month, at the center of strained U.S. relations with Indonesia over the incident, making her an accidental ambassador for justice on a nearly four- year quest to untangle who was behind the killings.
In Washington, Spier's mettle she has made 17 trips from her home in Colorado won her access to high officials, including John Ashcroft, then the attorney general.
In Jakarta, Spier, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone who later traveled the world to teach with her husband, met with the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, their second encounter.
Widows with horrific stories of violence abroad are not unusual in Washington. But Spier has struck a chord. She said she had tracked down every lead to seek a full investigation of the case, which at times seemed at risk of dying, amid resistance to the FBI from the Indonesian government.
Even today, the pursuit of the connections the case might have with the Indonesian military is likely to clash with the warming of military ties between the White House and Indonesia over the past 18 months. "If Patsy hadn't stuck with it, I'm not at all sure we'd be where we are today," said Matthew Daley, a former deputy assistant secretary of state. Earlier this month, the FBI arranged for the surrender in Papua of 12 men in the killings, including Anthonius Wamang, a member of a Papuan separatist group, who was indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington in June 2004.
Four of the men were freed, and the other eight are in custody in Jakarta. They are expected to be charged, lawyers in the case said. One of the suspects is 14, another 15, a list provided by a Papuan human rights group says. All are supporters of the Papuan separatist movement, a police investigator said.
The arrests and the promise by the Indonesians of a fair trial still leave unanswered who planned the attacks, what the motives were and whether some Indonesian soldiers were involved, Spier said.
In the past, Papuans and Indonesian soldiers have joined in common cause against Freeport, which they consider to be damaging the environment and not returning enough to the community.
To get those answers, she said she had asked Yudhoyono to allow the FBI to continue with the case and to question the suspects to ensure "a credible investigation." The president "gave his commitment," she said, although the national police chief, General Sutanto, said that the FBI's role was over.
"The police involved in the investigation still believe the military was involved," said an Indonesian investigator who gave The New York Times official transcripts of witness interviews. "But this involves relations between two countries. It will be difficult for the police to dare to say the military was involved."
Any evidence of military involvement is largely circumstantial.
Wamang was close to Indonesian military units in Papua and was paid by the military for trips to Jakarta, the police investigator said. After his capture, Wamang told the police that he got the bullets from a senior Indonesian soldier, his lawyer, Albert Rumbekwan, said. The FBI said in a report to a congressional panel that the assailants had used the same automatic rifles as those used by Indonesia's military.
The ambush occurred between military checkpoints that are only eight kilometers, or five miles, apart. The road falls away at almost an 80-degree angle into a mountainous valley, making it almost impossible for the attackers to get into position without the acquiescence of soldiers on the road, the Indonesian police investigator said, a conclusion shared by Spier and U.S. investigators.
The soldiers at the road checkpoints did not respond to the attack for more than 30 minutes, according to Spier and the FBI investigation.
The soldiers came to the rescue after a Freeport executive, Andrew Neale, came across the shooting as he was driving down the road and went to the military post for help. Neale said he heard "continuous shooting," an official transcript of his questioning by the Indonesian police says.
The ambush angered Congress and delayed the renewal of U.S. money for military training for Indonesia for more than two years. But over the objections of some members of Congress, the Bush administration resumed the training in February 2005 after the indictment of Wamang. The training had been suspended in 1992 after Indonesian security forces massacred civilians in East Timor in 1991.
In November, the administration waived curbs on lethal arms sales, saying that Indonesia was "a voice of moderation in the Islamic world" and that the FBI had received renewed cooperation in the case.
The preliminary Indonesian police report suggested that a motivation for the attack was a threat by Freeport, which runs the world's largest gold mine in Papua, to cut its payments to Indonesian soldiers. Freeport was giving Indonesian military officers such benefits as nights at the Sheraton hotel, airline tickets and cash, company documents provided to The New York Times show. In 1998 through 2004, the company gave individual officers and units more than $20 million in cash and benefits, the documents show.
If the shootings were motivated by soldiers who wanted more money from Freeport, Spier said she would seek to change laws on corporate behavior abroad. "If the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act needs to be changed, I want to change it," she said.
