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.