For months after the Aug. 31 attack, it seemed likely that no one would unravel the mystery of why these teachers were targeted on a mountain road leading to the giant Grasberg mine, which is run by P.T. Freeport Indonesia (PTFI), a subsidiary of New Orleans-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold. The military blamed the attack on the Free Papua Movement, a ragtag group of Papua rebels fighting a desultory war to free the province from Indonesian rule, but produced scant evidence to back the claim. Meanwhile, relatives of the slain teachers have grown increasingly frustrated by the inability of local police and the U.S. government to find answers. "We respected our government and Freeport," says Dirk Burgon, son of the dead school principal, "and nothing has happened."
The evidence cited by police is at best circumstantial but intriguing. Investigators found 100 spent shells in the area of the attack, yet the poorly armed rebels are not known to waste precious ammunition. In addition, the military produced the body of an unidentified Papua man shot by soldiers the day after the ambush, and claimed it was one of the assailants. But an examination of the corpse revealed that not only had the man been dead longer than the military insisted, he also had a medical conditionmassive enlargement of the testiclesthat would have made it difficult for him to be a guerrilla fighter. Eyewitnesses say that the gunmen wore military style paraphernalia such as boots and camouflage face paint, although no insignias were seen. The report concludes that it is "very possible" there was military involvement in the attack.
Indonesian soldiers have been accused of murder before. Last week, during a tribunal on the 2001 killing of Papua independence leader Theys Eluay, an army officer admitted that Eluay had been strangled to death by a private. The officer testified that the private had been ordered to pressure Eluay to stop agitating for independence. The controversy over the killing of the teachers is now intensifying questions about the dependability of Indonesia's armed forces. At the same time it complicates relations between Indonesia and the Bush Administration, which wants to preserve ties to the world's largest Muslim nation to bolster its global war on terror.
Since the deadly nightclub bombings on the Indonesian island of Balian attack that was recently shown to have al-Qaeda connectionsthe U.S. has fostered closer links with Indonesia's military, offering funding and training to help root out dangerous Islamic elements in the nation's society. If soldiers were involved in the murder of Americans, that effort could be derailedas could Indonesia's broader standing with the U.S. "This is not an issue where just the military-to-military component of our relationship could be affected," says a senior U.S. official. "It's the whole relationship."
Nevertheless Washington has made it clear in recent weeks that it is determined to get to the truth. In December, George W. Bush sent a personal envoy to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri to underline the importance he attached to finding the culprits in the Papua killings. With Megawati's consent, four FBI agents were dispatched to Indonesia, arriving in Jakarta on Jan. 23 and traveling to Papua earlier this month to begin an inquiry into the attack. The FBI has conducted two previous probes into the matter but lacked the authority until now to complete a thorough investigation.
Indonesia also has its own team of police and military investigators on the case, but it's not clear how effectively they are navigating this political quagmire. No arrests have been made and the former deputy chief of police in Papua, Brigadier General Raziman Tarigan, was recalled to Jakarta in mid-January after speaking publicly about the possibility of military involvement in the killings.