Indonesia court says pilot didn't kill activist- media

JAKARTA, Oct 4 (Reuters) Indonesia's Supreme Court has acquitted the off-duty pilot lower courts said murdered the country's leading human right activist during a 2004 flight on flag carrier Garuda, local media reported today.

The top court found Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto not guilty of killing Munir Thalib, but backed the lower court conclusions that he faked documents and gave him a two-year jail sentence, national news agency Antara reported.

A Supreme Court spokesman told Reuters he had not seen the ruling and could not immediately confirm the report. The court does not have a set system for announcing decisions to the public.

A district level court had sentenced Munir to 14 years last December and an appellate court upheld that punishment and the finding he put arsenic in food served to the activist, who was on his way to the Netherlands for postgraduate studies.

A Garuda Indonesia pilot himself, Priyanto had said he was on an assignment supervising security on the Jakarta-Singapore leg of Munir's flight. He admitted to giving his business-class seat to Munir during that leg.

Courts at all levels ruled the written assignment was a forgery.

At the district level trial, prosecutors did not present arguments on an alleged link with intelligence officials, and suggested Priyanto acted with the help only of two other Garuda crew and plotted the assassination alone because he did not like Munir's politics.

The Supreme Court ruling will likely turn the case wide-open again as nobody else has been sentenced in connection with Munir's death.

Munir grabbed national attention as repression of anti-government activists eased after the authoritarian rule of President Suharto ended in 1998.

He was an outspoken critic of the military and its heavy-handed methods in quashing dissent and separatists in hotspots such as Aceh and Papua provinces.

REUTERS MS PM1616