Dossiers on Bintang case submitted to prosecutors

JAKARTA (JP): Police have completed their investigation on former legislator Sri Bintang Pamungkas, concerning his alleged critical remarks of President Soeharto in a seminar in Germany last April.

They submitted the dossiers to the Jakarta High Prosecutor's Office so that they can proceed with legal prosecution.

"We have finished with the dossiers and the material evidence. Now it's up to the court to handle his case," M. Adenan Kasian, deputy chief prosecutor for general crimes of the Jakarta High Prosecutor's Office, said yesterday.

He told reporters that he would hand over the dossiers and the suspect to the Central Jakarta District Court, to enable them to proceed with the trial by the end of the month.

The prosecutors office has named P. Sitindjak as chief prosecutor for the trial and J. Kamaru and Suriansyah as assistants, he added.

Yesterday, prosecutors spent one hour checking the dossiers filed by the police. It was delayed for about 15 minutes when Bintang and the prosecutors quarreled over the verification procedures.

Bintang was accompanied by lawyers from the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute: Adnan Buyung Nasution, Soekardjo Adidjojo, Mohamad Assegaf, and R. Dwiyanto Prihartono. While the police investigators was represented by Capt. Tugino of National Police Headquarters.

Bintang, who is also a lecturer at the University of Indonesia, has been accused of discrediting the government at a seminar in Germany in April, which was held almost the same time as President Soeharto's official visit to the country.

He has also been linked to a series of anti-Indonesian government demonstrations in Germany during the President's visit.

Bintang has denied the accusations, saying that he was a curious, innocent bystander during the protest in Hanover, one of the German cities visited by Soeharto. Bintang was in Germany to take part in a number of speaking engagements.

He also rejected the accusations that his criticism of the government amounted to defamation. "Does it mean I slander and degrade the government if I criticized the government in my speeches," he has repeatedly told reporters during previous investigation sessions.

The outspoken politician was removed from the House of Representatives by his own faction, the United Development Party, in May, for allegedly going against the party's policies and for offending a number of cabinet ministers.

The material evidence submitted by the police consists of evidence handed over by Indonesian students who attended the seminar and witnessed the demonstrations. It consists of photographs of the seminar and the demonstrations, samples of the students' hand writing, four recorded cassettes of the seminar, a tape recorder and four samples of the leaflets distributed in the demonstrations.

Bintang is currently fighting a lawsuit in the Jakarta State Administrative Court against the government, who also slapped an overseas travel ban on him in May, although he was not formally charged yet.

Following the travel ban imposed on him, he could not attend his daughter's graduation ceremony in the United States last May.

The Court approved on Tuesday his lawsuit, which means that the lawsuit has passed the dismissal process and the court could proceed with the trial.(imn)