AGO vows to put Beddu in prison, lets Amrozi breathe
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Attorney General's Office (AGO) said on Wednesday it would send convicted corruptor and former chief of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) Beddu Amang to prison following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn his appeal.
But they will give convicted Bali bomber Amrozi at least one more chance to avert death by firing squad.
AGO spokesman Kemas Yahya Rahman said that Beddu would immediately be sent to prison to serve his two-year sentence once the prosecutors obtained the copy of the Court's verdict.
"We can do nothing until we obtain the copy from the court. But I can assure we're going to toss him in the pen despite his request for a judicial review and/or a presidential pardon," Kemas said.
Nevertheless, Kemas said that the AGO would allow Amrozi, the first convicted man in the Bali bombings, to seek a judicial review and possibly a presidential pardon after that.
"That is the procedure for a convict on death row," he explained.
Lawyers M. Assegaf and Mahendradatta, who represent Beddu and Amrozi respectively, refused to comment on the next legal measures, claiming that it was impossible to do anything at this point without certain documents.
"We cannot decide what to do until we obtain a copy of the verdict instructions," Assegaf explained to reporters.
Mehendradatta, Amrozi's lead lawyer, questioned the verdict -- even though he did not in fact have a copy of it -- which came only five months after the Denpasar High Court upheld Amrozi's death sentence.
"Akbar's case was submitted to the Supreme Court before Amrozi's. Why has the Court issued a verdict for my client so fast?" he wondered, referring to the corruption case of the House Speaker Akbar Tandjung, who appealed his three-year sentence to the Court in March 2003.
Chief Justice Bagir Manan earlier promised that the court would prioritize the cases of Akbar and the Bali bombings as mandated by legal regulations in which high-profile cases are to be processed as fast as possible.
The Supreme Court must hear appeal cases considered to be high priority within seven months.
It usually takes one week for a copy of a Supreme Court's verdict to reach the prosecutors via a district court. Prosecutors have no access to the copy from the Supreme Court, according to procedures.
A ruling from the Supreme Court is final, meaning that it must be executed by prosecutors except for verdicts delivering a death sentence.
On Tuesday, a panel of judges with the Supreme Court and another panel of judges unanimously dismissed the appeals of Beddu and Amrozi, respectively.
The AGO was confident that Beddu would not escape justice because it had not revoked the travel ban slapped on him since he was declared a suspect in the Bulog case in 2000.
The AGO has been criticized for its failure to bring high profile corruptors to justice. Among the corruptors who managed to wiggle their way to freedom are Samadikun Hartono of the now- defunct Modern Bank, who was sentenced to three years for misusing Rp 1.69 trillion of the Bank Indonesia Liquidity Support fund, and David Nusa Widjaja of the defunct Servitia Bank, who was sentenced to one year in jail for absconding with Rp. 1.27 trillion.
Beddu was sentenced to two years for his involvement in a land swap deal causing some Rp 20 billion (some US$24 million) in losses that taxpayers must now recoup.
Kemas doubted that the president would pardon Amrozi, especially after President Megawati Soekarnoputri has rejected requests for clemency from convicts on death row for crimes ranging from murder to drug dealing.
In the Indonesian criminal justice system, the proceedings of an appeal at the Supreme Court are conducted solely by the appointed judges without the presence of the prosecutors, defendants or defense lawyers.
The Supreme Court has no obligation to publish their verdicts publicly.