Prosecutors Claim Nadiem's Legal Team Skips Hearing, Lawyers Counter with Accusations of Coercion

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com - The Public Prosecutors (JPU) stated that the legal team of former Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Nadiem Makarim skipped the continuation hearing in the alleged corruption case regarding the procurement of Chromebook-based laptops on Wednesday (22/4/2026).

“The lawyers skipped the hearing, which had already been scheduled for today. It is certainly a bad precedent for law enforcement if they skip a hearing without a clear reason,” said the Head of the JPU Team, Roy Riady, when contacted by Kompas.com on Wednesday evening.

Roy said that his team had communicated with Nadiem’s legal team.

The advocates had already said they would attend.

However, until the hearing opened at 15:10 WIB earlier, not a single lawyer appeared in the courtroom.

The prosecutors stated that no lawyer accompanied Nadiem while he was at the court today.

As a result, until the hearing was postponed, Nadiem was not presented before the panel of judges.

At that time, Nadiem claimed to be ill and unable to attend the hearing.

When confirmed separately, Nadiem’s lawyer, Ari Yusuf, denied that their side had skipped the hearing.

He said that from the beginning, the legal team felt there was no need to attend because Nadiem had stated he was ill and unable to proceed with the hearing.

“(The lawyers did not attend) because Nadiem is ill, he cannot attend the hearing,” Ari said when confirmed.

In fact, Nadiem had already stated that he was unable to proceed.

“Today he (Nadiem) was forced by the JPU to attend the hearing, even though he had already declared he was ill; this is a serious human rights violation, the JPU is acting arbitrarily,” Ari said.