Libel trial begins against man claiming to have bribed justices

JAKARTA (JP): The trial opened on Monday in the Central Jakarta District Court of a defamation lawsuit filed by two Supreme Court justices against a middleman who claimed to have bribed them in order to win a case.

Prosecutor Hasan Madani told the court that defendant Endin Wahyudin had sullied the reputation of Justices Supraptini Sutarto and Marnis Kahar as he claimed that he had paid them money in order to win a case.

The prosecutor said that the defendant, chairman of the Association of Newspaper and Magazine Distributors based in Bandung, West Java, also claimed to have bribed another justice, M. Yahya Harahap, who is now retired.

The prosecutor did not elaborate on the bribery case in his four-page indictment.

But earlier reports said that the defendant had told the joint anticorruption team (TGPTPK), that Justices Supraptini and Kahar had accepted Rp 50 million each at their office and that he had delivered another Rp 96 million to Justice Yahya Harahap at the latter's residence in November 1998.

He told the team that they had been given money to rule in favor of the defendant Soenanta Soemali, alias Lie Sun Nam, in a dispute over a 17,000-square-meter plot of land in Bandung. The plaintiff in the case was Aminah. The Supreme Court's verdict in favor of Soenanta was issued in December 1998.

The anticorruption team announced the alleged bribery involving the three justices, without mentioning Endin's name as its informant.

Following the disclosure, Supraptini and Marnis filed a complaint with the National Police in August last year against Endin and chairman of the anticorruption team at that time, former Supreme Court justice Adi Andojo Soetjipto, for slander.

The police have yet to question Adi Andojo.

Prosecutor Hasan Madani told the court that Endin wrote a letter dated April 2000 to the three justices, complaining that the Bandung District Court had yet to execute the Supreme Court's ruling because the land had been seized by the district court as security in another case.

In the letter Endin asked the justices to help him calm down the heirs of the landowner. He said that the money he had given to them at some time between September and October 1998 to win the case had been obtained from the heirs, Hasan said.

Endin wrote to Harahap, Marnis and Supraptini urging them to, "please contact me so that we can seek the best solution to this problem," the prosecutor said in the indictment.

The prosecutor charged that Endin, who also claimed to be a press worker, was not involved in the land dispute case and only acted as the middle man between the judges and those involved in the case.

Presiding judge Amiruddin adjourned the trial to April 30 to hear Endin's defense.

Critics said that the trial should not have been commenced pending a thorough investigation of the alleged bribery case.

Lawyer Denny Panjaitan from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institution (LBH Jakarta) said that his client Endin was under the witness protection program run by Attorney General Marzuki Darusman.

"My client admitted that he had formally retracted his reports to the anticorruption team although it is no use halting the probe into the bribery case. He said a high court judge assigned to the Supreme Court had asked him to retract his reports in return for dropping the charges against him," he told reporters.

The defendant was charged under Article 311 of the Criminal Code concerning the making of reckless allegations and Article 310 on defamation.

Article 311 carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison, while Article 310 can land a defendant with nine months in jail if found guilty.(bby)