No sanction on officer who gave false information on missing plane: Indonesian military

No sanction will be imposed on Indonesia’s Makassar Air Force base command chief Commodore Eddy Suyanto for giving inaccurate information on the fate of the Adam Air jetliner which went missing on Monday, a military official said Wednesday.

“He only carried out his duty. He just gave information on search and rescue efforts to find the missing plane,” Antara news agency quoted Indonesian Air Force (TNI AU) headquarters’ information office head Commodore Daryatmo as saying.

“In light with the search and rescue efforts, any information should be taken into account and followed up. It was a form of accountability,” he said.

Quoting obscure sources, Eddy Suyanto had said the wreckage of the ill-fated Adam Air plane had been found. It had crashed in a mountainous area in West Sulawesi on Tuesday morning and 12 out of 102 people on board had been evacuated to a hospital, he said.

But a search and rescue team and military planes that were sent to the alleged crash site on Tuesday failed to find anything corroborating Suyanto’s information.

Daryatmo said the source of the misinformation was a local resident in West Sulawesi who claimed to have seen the wreckage of the ill-fated jetliner, dead victims and survivors in Rangoan village in Matanga sub district, Polewali Mandar district, West Sulawesi.

Suyanto had earlier passed on the false information to the SAR (Search and Rescue) agency, he said.

Xinhua