Investigation of Bintang continues

JAKARTA (JP): Former legislator Sri Bintang Pamungkas went through another round of questioning yesterday concerning his alleged role in a series of activities opposing the Indonesian government in Germany in April.

Bintang said the investigation at the National Police Headquarters expanded from questioning on his personal experience in Germany to the involvement of other people in demonstrations and seminars in that country.

"Police investigators let me listen to a recording tape, in which a woman was speaking at an academic forum," he told reporters at the office of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation after the questioning yesterday.

He said that he was asked whether he could identify the speaker, whose voice he heard on the tape.

"I told them that I had no idea who was speaking as the tape was too noisy to recognize the voice," said the former legislator from the United Development Party.

When the police asked him whether Yeni Rosa Damayanti, a human rights activist, also delivered a speech on the day he lectured at Humboldt University in Berlin on April 10, 1995, he acknowledged this was true.

"Yeni was asked by the organizing committee to deliver a speech right after me," he said.

He said he had not realized previously that Yeni also had been invited to speak at the seminar, saying that he thought he was the only Indonesian invited by the university.

Bintang insisted that the investigation into his activities is "a mistake".

"The investigation should be stopped because the police do not have adequate evidence of my involvement in the protests, which occurred at the same time President Soeharto was on an official visit to Germany," he said.

"If the government thinks I defamed the President and the government in my speech, the government is wrong," he said, adding that he had no intention of doing so.

Bintang has been questioned repeatedly over a statement in the seminar in which he allegedly called President Soeharto a dictator.

"I only disagreed with several policies of the President," he added, saying that he believed the tape had been edited.

The questioning will continue on Monday. (imn)