By Peter Sorkin
The mutilated body of a Woodside lawyer who was on a mission to bring attention to human rights abuses in his native country of Indonesia was identified Sept. 6 by his relatives, a colleague said.
Jafar Siddiq Hamzah, 35, who founded the International Forum for Aceh in 1998, vanished Aug. 5 outside Medan, about 48 miles from where his and the bodies of four others were found, said Robert Jereski, executive director of the International Forum on Aceh.
Hamzah, who emigrated to the United States in 1995 with his then-wife, a Filipino-born American citizen, was originally from Lhokseumawe. He had returned to Indonesia on a monthlong mission to document and highlight human rights abuses by police and the military and had hoped to establish a newspaper on the island of Sumatra.
At a prayer vigil for the slain activist at the Indonesian Community Mosque at 48th Street and 31st Avenue in Long Island City Friday, two of Hamzah
