TIMIKA, Indonesia (AFP)--Eight Papuan men have been arrested
over a deadly ambush on a security convoy near the giant Freeport
gold and copper mine in Indonesia's Papua province, police said
Tuesday.
The detainees included the alleged gunman who opened fire on the
convoy on July 12, killing a Freeport security guard, police said.
A policeman who escaped the ambush was found dead in a ravine the
following day.
"We arrested eight people...one carried out the shooting and the
other carried ammunition," provincial police chief Bagus Ekodanto
said.
"We are still investigating the other six."
Ekodanto refused to name the suspects or say whether they
belonged to the separatist Free Papua Movement.
The attack was one of several military-style ambushes on
Freeport and police vehicles on the road between Timika town and
the Grasberg mine that killed three people earlier this month.
A day earlier gunmen had ambushed a Freeport vehicle on the same
road, killing an Australian project manager at Grasberg, which is
owned by the local subsidiary of U.S. company Freeport McMoRan
Copper & Gold (FCX).
Ekodanto said police weren't "yet" linking the two attacks on
July 11 and 12, although they took place within a short distance
from each other on the same road leading to the mine.
Military chief Gen. Djoko Santoso has blamed separatist rebels
for all of the attacks, but police have said there is no indication
that is the case.
Senior officials have said ex-soldiers or police could have been
involved as part of a dispute over control of access to lucrative
illegal mining operations using tailings from Grasberg.
Defense minister Juwono Sudarsono has even suggested the
involvement of foreign countries that have an "interest in
destabilizing Freeport."
The Grasberg mine sits on the world's largest gold and copper
reserves and is a lightning rod for discontent over rule from
Jakarta, which took control of the eastern Papua region in 1969 in
a U.N.-backed vote widely seen as rigged.
Papua is the scene of a long-running separatist insurgency by
poorly armed local guerrillas who have reportedly denied killing
the Australian.
Indonesia refuses to allow journalists and foreign aid agencies
free access to the resource-rich area, citing fears they will
"agitate" over issues such as human rights abuses by the Indonesian
military.