Jakarta team digs around barracks to look for body of They's missing driver

JAKARTA, March 3 (AFP) - A military team are currently conducting extensive excavations at the headquarters of a the elite army battalion in Papua province to try to locate a missing key witness in the murder of local pro-independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay, a report said Sunday.

The team from the Indonesian military police headquarters have already dug up half of the base of the Tribuana army Kopassus batallion in Jayapura, the capital of Irian Jaya, in its efforts to look for Arsitoteles Masoka, the key witness who is believed to have been one of the last to see Eluay alive.

"We, with the help of some 20 personnel of the army combat engineers have been digging for the past two days in an around the Tribuana Kopassus headquarters because there are some opinions that Aristoteles was buried here," the commander of the Irian Jaya Military Police, Colonel Sutarna (Eds: one name) was quoted by the Media Indonesia daily as saying.

"We have already dug out half of the surface but that suspiscion has yet to be proved," Sutarna said.

He said that the excavation will continue until the whole ground had been checked for any burial site.

Masoka was driving Eluay back home from a ceremony at the Kopassus Tribuana battalion headquarters on November 10 when their car was halted by a group of men and Eluay kidnapped.

Eluay was found dead in his car, abandoned on the side of the road near the border with Papua New Guinea on the following day.

Witnesses said that they had found Masoka, still in shock and bleeding, on the road between Jayapura and Sentani, Eluay's home town some 40 kilometers west of Jayapura, and at his demand dropped him in front of the Tribuana battalion headquarters.

Masoka who had had time to alert Eluay's family about the abduction, was never seen again.

The Kopassus battalion's headquarters itself has been put off limits to the public and the battalion had been pulled back to Jakarta pending the results of the investigation.

Besides the military probe team, the government has appointed another national team to investigate the case whose membership includes officials from the national human rights commission, parliamentarians, police and military officers and representatives of Non-governmental organisations.

The national team suffered a setback recently when two Papuan members resigned and non-government organisations and church groups in Papua have called for the team to be disbanded in favour of an independent inquiry. 

A sporadic low-level armed struggle for independence began after the Dutch ceded control of the territory to Indonesia in 1963. Eluay had called for a peaceful solution.