Munir Said Thalib (8 December 1965 – 7 September 2004) was an Indonesian activist. Founder of the Kontras human rights organisation and laureate of the 2000 Right Livelihood Award, Munir was assassinated in 2004 while travelling to Utrecht University to pursue a master's degree in international law and human rights. He is one of Indonesia's most famous human rights and anti-corruption activists. Political activist career Munir was born into a family of Hadhrami Arab and Javanese origins, from Kathiri. He studied law at Brawijaya University in Malang in the province of East Java, and later started off his career in 1989 as a legal aid officer in the East Java provincial capital, Surabaya. He became one of Indonesia's leading human rights campaigners and faced intimidation, including death threats. He accused the Indonesian military of human rights violations in East Timor and in the troubled provinces of Papua and Aceh, and accused them of running a criminal network involved in illegal tree logging and drug smuggling. He once fractured his hand whilst saving an elderly labourer from being beaten by security officials. He founded the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS). His last position was executive director of Indonesian Human Rights Monitor (IMPARSIAL), another Indonesian human rights NGO. In 2001, while he was investigating Kopassus's role in kidnappings, a bomb package was delivered to his house. Assassination and aftermath Munir was poisoned with arsenic on a flight from Jakarta to Amsterdam on 7 September 2004. He was travelling on state-owned airline Garuda Indonesia. It was concluded from Munir's autopsy and eyewitnesses during the trial that he had died two hours before arrival in Schiphol International Airport. He took the arsenic during his flight transit in Singapore, or sometime near that time. In Singapore, Pollycarpus Priyanto, a Garuda pilot at the time and the prime suspect in Munir's trial, left the flight and then went back to Indonesia. Originally he departed from Indonesia by deadheading, with a fake document which allowed him to fly on another flight which was not his scheduled flight. Munir began to suffer acute diarrhea and bouts of vomiting shortly after his flight took off from Singapore to Amsterdam. The cabin crew informed the pilot in command that a passenger was sick, and a doctor who happened to be on the plane was asked to provide medical assistance. However, Munir died around two hours before