Timika Airport

Timika Airport

On April 15, 1996 at about 5 a.m., Second Lieutenant Sanurip, 36, a member of Kopassus, who was assigned to take part at a military operation to secure the release of 11 hostages being held by the Free Papua Movement, began shooting indiscriminately with an automatic weapon at people near an army-run aircraft hangar.
In the ensuing shoot-out with military personnel, Sanurip killed a total of 16 people - 3 Kopassus officers, 8 ABRI soldiers and 5 civilians, one of them Airfast pilot Michael Findlay from New Zealand - and injured another 11, before he was wounded in the leg and subdued by fellow soldiers.
The shooting was allegedly sparked when an army transporter, carrying 2 dead soldiers, who, according to differing reports, were either killed by OPM members during the hostage rescue operation, or hacked to death by villagers who had accused them of raping two women, made a fuel stop at Timika airport, and Lieutenant Sanurip realised that one of the two was a friend of his. Later reports contradicted this, though, stating that Lieutenant Sanurip either suffered from depression or malaria when the shooting occurred and that the might have been the trigger.

Sanurip was sentenced

to death on April 23, 1997.

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