Court asks for two German witnesses
Court asks for two German witnesses
JAKARTA (JP): The Central Jakarta District Court trying politician Sri Bintang Pamungkas for allegedly insulting President Soeharto has ordered the prosecutors to present two key witnesses who are currently living as stateless residents in Germany.
Presiding Judge Syoffinan Sumantri yesterday also ordered the defendant's lawyers to help contact Sri Basuki and Sunarto, both participants in a seminar at a German university last year during which Bintang allegedly made the derogatory remarks.
Bintang is being accused by the government prosecutors of calling both Indonesia's first president Sukarno and his successor Soeharto dictators. He has also allegedly accused them of deviating from the 1945 Constitution.
Yesterday's session was scheduled to hear the testimony of the two persons, whom the prosecutors failed to bring before the court. Sri Basuki and Sunarto reportedly posed questions which invited Bintang to launch into one of his usually critical speeches of the government.
Chief Prosecutor P. Sitinjak said he had, through the Indonesian Consulate-General in Bonn, Germany, sent letters to the two requesting that they testify in the trial. Both persons have reportedly not received the letters.
Sunarto, who found out about the summons from the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH), said in a letter that he could not afford the risk of entering Indonesia in his stateless condition.
He and Sri Basuki were former students during Sukarno's era in the 1960s who had been sent to then communist East Germany to study.
"I'm an asylum seeker," Sunarto said in the letter read out yesterday by Adnan Buyung Nasution, one of Bintang's lawyers.
Sunarto and Sri Basuki were the most active participants of the seminar at the Technische Universitaet in Berlin on Apr. 5, 1995, which featured Sri Bintang Pamungkas and Yeni Rosa Damayanti, a student activist.
Both raised questions which contained terms such as "dictator", "Indonesian Communist Party (PKI)" and "violations against the 1945 Constitution".
Bintang said he used the same words to paraphrase the questions before he answered them. It was those remarks which the prosecutors say are slanderous.
Buyung yesterday asked the chief prosecutor to again summon Sri Basuki and Sunarto, but this time leaving out the question of their citizenship. The prosecutor had reportedly asked the two to produce proof of their citizenship.
"Even foreign citizens can testify before an Indonesian court so the prosecutor's request was groundless," Buyung said.
Presiding Judge Syoffinan Sumantri gave the prosecutors three weeks to bring the two witnesses to court. The trial was adjourned to March 6. (imn)