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Military, Police Can’t Agree On Source of Papua Attacks
Farouk Arnaz & April Aswadi | July 14, 2009

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Markus Hagenauer
1:00pm Jul 15, 2009

Also a lot of evidence show, that TNI was involved in the ambush, they join an operation to find perpetrators of the attacks.

This can only lead to finding a scapegoat (likely the OPM), not who realy was behind the incidents.

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While publicly agreeing to cooperate in a joint operation to find the perpetrators of the deadly weekend ambushes near the US miner Freeport McMoRan’s complex in Papua, military and police officials publicly disagreed on Tuesday about who was responsible for them.

Armed Forces (TNI) commander Djoko Santoso said the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM) was likely behind the three shooting attacks on Saturday and Sunday, during which an Australian national working as a project manager for PT Freeport Indonesia, a Freeport security guard, and a Mobile Brigade (Brimob) police officer were killed. In addition, five Freeport employees and two police officers were wounded by gunfire.

The ambushes occurred within a 3-kilometer stretch on the Timika-Tembagapura road leading to Freeport’s Grasberg mine complex, between the Mile 51 and 53 markers.

“It’s likely [that the rebels carried out the attacks], as there are indications of OPM presence at Mile 50,” Djoko told reporters at the State Palace.

However, Papua provincial police chief Bagus Ekodanto told the Jakarta Globe there was no evidence the OPM or anyone else in particular was involved, but noted that the attackers appeared to be well trained.

“There are indications they were experts with weapons with 5.56 millimeter bullets, which is a standard weapon for the TNI and National Police,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean they aren’t OPM and if they are, then they are well-trained OPM.”

One well-placed government source and a top official with the National Police’s intelligence directorate told the Jakarta Globe that an elite military unit may have been behind the attacks. They declined to reveal the name of the unit.

“Based on past experience, this is what has been going on. To begin with, the military is unhappy with the security arrangement in which Freeport pays the police and not the military,” the government source said. “Maybe they did it to show [Freeport] they need better security.”

The Grasberg mining complex is one of the world’s biggest gold and copper production sites. The weekend’s violence was the worst in the area since a 2002 ambush on a convoy of Freeport vehicles on the same road that left two US nationals and an Indonesian worker dead. The case strained relations between the US and Indonesia because police investigators initially implicated military personnel in that attack.

Freeport previously paid the TNI to provide security around the mining site, but it has now contracted a police task force for the duty. Military critics claim rogue commanders have ordered attacks to pressure Freeport to rehire the TNI.

Separately, the National Police announced on Tuesday that the TNI would join an ongoing operation next week find the perpetrators of the attacks.

“We will conduct a joint operation with the military there,” National Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri told reporters. He declined to speculate on whether the attackers were well trained despite the fact that they used standard police and military-issue 5.56 millimeter bullets.