Police to question Amien over complicity

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)