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Murder investigation continues with more twists, turns
The National Police’s embattled former chief of internal affairs, Insp. Gen. Ferdy Sambo, was allegedly in an “angry and emotional” state that led him to orchestrate the murder, the police said on Thursday.
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Suspended police internal affairs chief Insp. Gen. Ferdy Sambo arrives on Aug. 4 at the National Police's Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) in Jakarta for questioning in the alleged murder of Brig. Nofriansyah Yosua Hutabarat on July 8. (Antara/Aprillio Akbar)
T
he National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) must wait its turn to grill the National Police’s former internal affairs chief, Insp. Gen. Ferdy Sambo, as the police continued on Thursday to question the two-star general who was allegedly driven by revenge to mastermind the murder of his own aide-de-camp.
Ferdy had been grilled over a potential breach of ethics before he was eventually named on Aug. 4 a suspect in the premeditated murder of Brig. Nofriansyah Yosua Hutabarat. As of Thursday, he was being questioned at the Mobile Brigade (Brimob) detention center in Depok, West Java, by the police’s special investigation team.
Komnas HAM, which has pursued an investigation of its own into the case in search of potential human rights violations, was expected to interrogate Ferdy on Thursday but was not able to proceed after the police told it that investigators needed more time with the suspect.
“Since [police questioning] is part of the investigation and the law enforcement process, we respect that decision,” Komnas HAM commissioner Choirul Anam told reporters.
He also said that the commission’s investigation so far had yielded information pointing to potential obstruction of justice and evidence tampering at the crime scene by Ferdy or his accomplices or both.
“[Obstruction of justice] in the investigation process refers to whether or not the crime scene has been altered, and we have strong indications pointing to it. [We’re] currently discussing potential human rights violations,” he said at the commission headquarters in Jakarta on Thursday.
Another commissioner told The Jakarta Post that Komnas HAM would proceed to question Ferdy’s wife, Putri Candrawathi, who at one point in the investigation was alleged to have been subject to an attempted sexual assault by Yosua before he died.
