Petrus sues police over arrest
JAKARTA (JP): Lawyer Petrus Bala Pattyona filed suit at the South Jakarta District Court on Monday, protesting his arrest by city police officers last week.
The suit named Jakarta Police chief Maj. Gen. Noegroho Djajoesman as defendant.
"The city police officers failed to equip themselves with sufficient evidence to conduct the arrest," Petrus said in his suit, adding that the arrest was a violation of Article 17 and paragraph 2 of Article 18 of the Criminal Code.
Petrus was accompanied by fellow lawyers grouped in the Defenders Team for Lawyers' Honor.
The group, led by Trimedya Panjaitan of the Association of Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Protection, met with the court's clerk Julrizal.
The group of 53 lawyers from various law firms and organizations said it would defend Petrus in the proceedings.
Earlier, the lawyers claimed to bring some 150 of their colleagues to represent Petrus in court.
The hearing of Petrus' lawsuit is scheduled to begin next Thursday.
The lawyers coordinator, Trimedya, said the group was unable to collect the signatures of all the lawyers supporting the action.
"We had a coordination problem. We had difficulty in assembling the lawyers altogether in one place," he said after filing the lawsuit.
Petrus dismissed allegations that he mobilized many lawyers in an attempt to have the charges against him dropped.
"It is only a matter of solidarity among lawyers," he said.
Among the lawyers supporting Petrus are members of the Indonesian Advocates Association (AAI), PBHI and the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta).
Several plainclothes detectives arrested Petrus on Dec. 14, shortly after the latter attended a pretrial lawsuit filed by his client Mirafsur Khan, who is the father of drug suspect Zarina. Television news footage showed him vigorously protesting the arrest as he was bundled into a waiting vehicle.
Petrus was accused of submitting a fake letter of testimony of Zarina's fellow suspect Ahian Santoso, alias Yeye, to judge I Gde Putra Yadnya of the South Jakarta District Court in a hearing earlier this month.
Petrus represented Mirafsur, who filed a suit at the court last month to demand the court declare as unlawful the city police's move to arrest his daughter on Nov. 11. The court ruled in favor of the city police and dismissed the suit last Friday, declaring the arrest to be lawful.
Zarina, once dubbed the country's "ecstasy queen" after a prior conviction for storing a huge quantity of the drug, was arrested with Yeye at a hotel-apartment complex in West Jakarta for drug possession. (asa)