Nurdin takes sick as police detain him

Nurdin takes sick as police detain him

P.C. Naommy, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Nurdin Halid was rushed to the hospital early on Saturday, hours
after police detained him as a suspect in a sugar smuggling case,
while the lawmaker's lawyers said their client would fight his
arrest.

Nurdin is being treated at the Sukanto Police Hospital in
Kramatjati, East Jakarta, where he arrived at about at 3 a.m.

His lawyer Farhat Abbas said his client appeared depressed and
vomited several times after being questioned by police
investigators for more than nine hours on Friday night.

Nurdin was taken to Pertamina Hospital before being
transferred to the Sukanto Police Hospital, Farhat said.

The director of the National Police's fraud unit, Brig. Gen.
Samuel Ismoko, said on Saturday his office had suspended Nurdin's
detention until his health improved.

"But even though he is being treated at the hospital, it does
not mean that he is free. We have deployed officers to the
hospital to make sure that he does not go anywhere," Ismoko said.

He said Nurdin would be put back in police custody once he was
discharged from the hospital to continue his questioning over the
smuggling of over 70,000 tons of sugar from Thailand.

The police said they had declared Nurdin a suspect in the case
and decided to detain him after questioning him on Friday.

But Nurdin's lawyers claimed on Saturday that their client was
still being treated as a witness in the case when he was
hospitalized and that the police had not issued an arrest warrant
for him.

"He is a free man. If the police question him as a suspect, my
client will refuse to cooperate and will only answer questions
during a court hearing," said Nurdin's lawyer Edison Betaubun.

Nurdin, who is also the chairman of the Confederation of
Primary Cooperatives Association (Inkud), has allegedly been
implicated in the sugar scandal.

The questioning on Friday focused on Nurdin's role in an
agreement between Inkud and state-owned plantation company PTPN,
which was granted a license to import some 70,000 tons of sugar
before April 30.

National Police chief of detectives Comr. Gen. Suyitno Landung
Soedjono told The Jakarta Post that Nurdin acknowledged being
aware of the agreement between Inkud and PTPN.

He previously denied any knowledge of irregularities in the
import of the sugar, saying he was not involved in the
transactions.

Inkud was given a license to import sugar on behalf of PTPN X.
It later formed a consortium comprising five partner companies to
handle the imports and appointed PT Phoenix Commodities Indonesia
to deal with the shipment of the sugar from Thailand.

Suyitno said the police had issued a second summons to Phoenix
president director Raja Banarje for questioning next week over
irregularities in the import of the sugar. Banarje failed to
answer an earlier summons on June 21.

Banarje's lawyer Elsa Syarif said her client was unable to
answer the first summons because he had to go to India on
business.

"We will be ready to respond to a second summons, but I have
not yet received it from the police," Elsa said.

She said Banarje should not be held responsible for falsifying
bills of lading used to warehouse the sugar.

"Based on the collateral management agreement, Inkud is
responsible for taking care of warehousing documents, not PT
Phoenix. We are only responsible for the shipment of the imported
sugar," said Elsa.

The director general of customs and excise, Eddy Abdurrachman,
said his staff had determined that the bills of lading used by PT
Phoenix to apply for warehousing were false.