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human rights group has called on the state apparatus to protect the remaining witnesses in the case of the murder of activist Munir Said Thalib, following the untimely death of Raymon “Ongen” Latuihamallo on Wednesday.

Ongen was among only a few witnesses who testified on the death of Munir, who was poisoned on a flight en route to the Netherlands.

“We ask the National Police and the Witness and Victim Protection Agency [LPSK] to pay special attention to the remaining witnesses in the case,” said Choirul Anam, secretary-general of the Solidarity Committee for Munir (Kasum).

He made the call following the death of Ongen.

Ongen, 56, reportedly died of a heart attack on Wednesday.

“He suddenly collapsed while on his way home,” Ongen’s wife, Eta Latuihamallo, said as reported by kompas.com on Thursday.

Eta said Ongen, who was driving her and their daughter home from Mangga Dua in North Jakarta, suddenly lost control of the car near Blok M in South Jakarta.

“He tried to pull on the hand brake twice,” she added.

Eta appealed to local residents for help and they rushed Ongen to Pertamina Central Hospital but “it was too late”.

Anam said the President and the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) would find it hard to reopen the Munir case if they did not protect the remaining witnesses.

He said some of the other witnesses in the same case had also died of heart attacks.

“One of them was Bijah Subiyakto, former deputy VII of the National Intelligence Agency (BIN),” Anam told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

He said Kasum strongly believed that Bijah had known a great deal about Munir’s murder, as he had met with Munir only a month before the latter died. “The fact that another witness has died, supposedly from a heart attack, makes us suspicious that there are real efforts to weaken the case,” he said.

“These efforts are specifically aimed at concealing information from key witnesses.”

If Ongen was murdered, he added, then the perpetrator would have to have been a person with senior intelligence skills, who operated with a clear target and a brilliant exit strategy.

Ongen was linked to Munir, who died of arsenic poisoning on his way from Jakarta to the Netherlands aboard Garuda Indonesia flight number GA 974 in 2004.

Ongen was seen talking to Munir and the case’s original defendant — Garuda pilot Pollycarpus Priyanto — at a coffee shop in Singapore’s Changi Airport before the flight.

Ongen was not the last of the key witnesses; several more remain alive, according to Anam.

“There is Budi Santoso, a witness who gave fundamental and clear testimony about the involvement of BIN in the case,” he said.

Budi, however, did not appear in court when he testified against Pollycarpus. Budi’s testimony was the only one that implicated Muchdi PR, a former BIN deputy chief, who was charged with masterminding Munir’s murder.

Anam said that although he did not know Budi’s current whereabouts, he believed that Budi was still alive and had pivotal information about the case.

He said that Budi’s last-known whereabouts were in Pakistan, where he had sought refuge for safety reasons.

Anam claimed that in spite of the deaths of these two witnesses, he along with KASUM had gathered several new pieces of evidence, such as a rebuttal of Muchdi’s alibi, Muchdi declaring that he had been on duty in Malaysia at the time of Munir’s killing.

“After meeting with BIN at several adjudication sessions at the Central Information Commission (KIP), it turned out that the intelligence agency did not possess a letter of assignment ordering Muchdi to go to Malaysia.”