Agencies | July 14, 2009
THE body of an Australian man killed in Indonesia's Papua province arrived home today, authorities say.
Drew Grant, 29, of Melbourne, worked for the US-based mining giant Freeport McMoRan. He was shot as he travelled in a car with four others, including another Australian, on a road between Tembagapura and Timika early on Saturday.
A spokeswoman from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Mr Grant's body had arrived home.
“The man's body arrived in Australia on 14 July, 2009,” she said in a statement. “Consular staff from the Australian Embassy will continue to assist the family.”
No further information was immediately available.
The doctor who conducted the autopsy on an Australian man killed in Indonesia's Papua province says bullets may have been removed from the body before he examined it.
Papua police chief Bagus Ekodanto said at the weekend that the attack was premeditated and the attackers used weapons belonging to the police or the military.
Abdul Munim Idris, the doctor who conducted the autopsy on Mr Grant's body, said on Monday it was possible that bullets were removed from the corpse before he could perform his examination in Jakarta on Saturday night.
The bullets had metal casings, which would be consistent with bullets of a military grade, but also other bullets, the doctor told the ABC.
The doctor also contradicted previous police accounts of five bullets, saying four bullets were fired at Mr Grant, with two hitting him in the neck and two in the chest.
There were no exit wounds or whole bullets, just fragmentation, the ABC report said.
The death toll from a string of attacks on Freeport's giant mine in Papua rose to three on Monday, when the body of an Indonesian policeman was found.
The body of Marsom Patipulohi was pulled from a ravine near the road to the company's Grasberg gold and copper mine and roughly 20km from the site where Mr Grant was killed on Saturday and a Freeport security guard was killed in a firefight on Sunday.
National police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said Marsom had tried to flee “unidentified attackers” who opened fire on his police vehicle, but fell into a ravine and died.
Indonesia has sent investigators and elite counter-terror police to guard the mine area after the shootings.
Two officers from the Australian Federal Police have joined the Indonesian investigators.
Papua is the scene of a long-running separatist insurgency by poorly armed local guerrillas who have reportedly denied responsibility for killing Mr Grant.
- with AFP
Source:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25781699-2702,00.html
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