Police to question Amien over complicity
JAKARTA (JP): Police will summon for questioning government critic Amien Rais for involvement in a meeting that allegedly transpired into a campaign to disrupt stability and order, police chief Gen. Dibyo Widodo said yesterday.
"We'll soon question Amien Rais for his alleged involvement in wrongdoing to disrupt stability and order," Dibyo told reporters after the transfer of duty of the Armed Forces (ABRI) chief of sociopolitical affairs and chief of general affairs at the Armed Forces' Cilangkap headquarters in East Jakarta.
Dibyo was referring to a meeting held by the Center for Strategy and Policy Studies (PPSK) at the Radisson Hotel in Yogyakarta on Feb. 5.
The meeting reportedly discussed efforts to mobilize one million people onto the streets of Jakarta on March 1, the day the five-yearly General Session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) commenced. The session reelected President Soeharto to his seventh consecutive term, elected B.J. Habibie vice president and endorsed the 1998/2003 State Policy Guidelines.
Arifin Panigoro, an oil tycoon and member of the Assembly, is now under police investigation for allegedly making remarks during the discussion that tarnished the government. He is being charged with article 154 of the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum penalty of seven-year imprisonment.
Another businessman, identified only as M.S., is also under police investigation for a separate case of slandering President Soeharto. He is being charged under Article 134 of the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum penalty of six years in jail.
There were 18 participants in the meeting, all of which Dibyo said would be questioned.
Amien Rais, chairman of the 28-million-strong Muhammadiyah Moslem organization, has declared that he was responsible for organizing the meeting and also for the content of discussion.
"I was the one who invited Arifin Panigoro and his three colleagues to the discussion," he said as quoted by D&R weekly magazine.
Amien, also PPSK chairman, said he would be ready with a complete recording as well as minutes of the discussion should the case go to court.
The chief of the Police Detectives Corps, Maj. Gen. Nurfaizi, said yesterday that five people had already been questioned in connection to the meeting, including Arifin Panigoro and a fellow lecturer of Amien's at the Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University, Afan Gaffar.
Nurfaizi said none of the participants had been arrested.
He said police opened the investigation on the discussion upon receiving a report from Sofian Effendi, assistant to then state minister of research and technology B.J. Habibie, describing the meeting's recommendation for the establishment of a "people's power" movement.
Sofian is a member of the PPSK. Afan was so outraged by Sofian's report, which led to the police questioning, that he said he would sue Sofian.
But Nurfaizi denied that Sofian's report was the police's only source of information that initiated the investigation. "We have other sources of information," he said.
He declined to respond to a question on whether the possibility of a coup had been mentioned during the meeting. He instead suggested that journalists wait for the completion of the police's investigation.
"We'll stop the investigation only if the evidence we get is insufficient to bring the case to court," he said.
In a related development, Sofian Effendi denied allegations that he had harmed his colleague through his report.
"The report, which was actually a personal letter to Pak Habibie, was meant to save my colleagues from (the possible impacts of) reports from intelligence officers that might put them into trouble," he said.
He said he could not understand Afan's decision to sue him for his letter to Habibie.
Afan hired lawyers of the Yogyakarta Legal Aid Institute Thursday to represent him in filing a lawsuit against Sofian. (23/imn/cst)