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Jakarta. Nearly two months after the brutal attack on anticorruption activist Tama Satrya Langkun, police have been unable to track down the perpetrators and seem to have put the investigation on hold.

“There is no further investigation into my case,” Tama told the Jakarta Globe. “It has been maybe six weeks since I was last questioned by police. I don’t know what is going on or how far the investigation has gone.”

Tama, a researcher with Indonesia Corruption Watch, was ambushed by four assailants in the early hours of July 8 as he was returning home from watching a World Cup football match.

He sustained serious injuries in the attack and had to be hospitalized for several days.

The ICW’s chairman, Danang Widoyoko, said Tama was the key researcher in its report to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the Judicial Mafia Eradication Task Force on suspiciously large bank accounts belonging to a number of National Police generals.

The attack came just days after Molotov cocktails were thrown at the office of Tempo, a weekly magazine that had reported on suspicious bank accounts belonging to several high-ranking police officers.

The Tempo attack and the assault on Tama prompted a public outcry and led President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to call for thorough police investigations in both cases.

Members of the House of Representatives gave police an ultimatum, warning that they would launch their own investigation into the cases if the perpetrators weren’t arrested soon.

The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) also announced a planned investigation.

“But they were all just empty claims,” said Nurcholis, an advocate at the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation. “There has been absolutely no further action now that the case isn’t generating any media attention and the public is no longer concerned about the attacks.”

A Jakarta Police spokesman, Sr. Comr. Boy Rafli Amar, said the investigation into the assault on Tama was ongoing. “We have targeted a few people and we are gathering evidence,” he said.

“We understand that people think we are moving too slow, but we are working with very little evidence and very few witnesses.”

Usman Hamid, former head of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said that in addition to not making any headway in the Tama and Temp probes, police also had failed to investigate the reports of the suspicious bank accounts.

“So to say that there was an attempt to silence Tama and see the case never get prosecuted is not an exaggeration, as many police officers have claimed,” he said.

“It is possible the attack was executed by a group inside the police or using hired civilians to avoid detection.”

The police have said an internal investigation into the 23 suspicious bank accounts that were the subject of the ICW investigation and the Tempo report found only two appeared to contain money from illegal sources.

One account belonged to Martin Reno, an officer in Papua already in jail for a logging-related crime. The other belonged to whistle-blower Comr. Gen. Susno Duadji, who is already being detained over a graft case.

The other accounts reportedly held money earned through legitimate businesses or that had been inherited.

Tama is now under the protection of the Witness and Victims Protection Agency (LPSK).

“I get easily paranoid, or perhaps I’m just more cautious. I always become suspicious whenever I meet new people,” Tama said.

“Just the other day I felt like I was being followed by someone in a car. My heart started racing and I reactively contacted the police. But I guess that was just in my mind.”