Sjahril granted five-day leave

JAKARTA (JP): Suspended Bank Indonesia (Central Bank) governor Sjahril Sabirin left on Wednesday for his hometown in West Sumatra after securing permission from the Attorney General's Office to leave his place of detention for five days, an official said.

Yushar Yahya, spokesman to the Attorney General's Office, said Sjahril had requested permission to visit his ailing 91-year-old father, who is now being treated at the Yarsi Hospital in the Bukittinggi mayoralty, West Sumatra.

"Sjahril was permitted to leave his detention from today (Wednesday) until Sept. 17. A prosecutor and one of the office's internal security officers are guarding Sjahril during the trip," he told journalists.

Yushar said the permission was granted after the Attorney General's Office secured the guarantee of Bank Indonesia's deputy governor Achjar Ilyas and chief of Sjahril's team of defense lawyers Sulistyo that the suspect would not flee the country nor tamper with evidence.

"The permission was signed by Deputy Attorney General for Special Crimes Ramelan," he said.

Asked about the grounds for granting the permission, Yushar said it was merely humanitarian.

Earlier on Wednesday, Sjahril was picked up by his wife and daughter before heading for the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Sjahril has been detained at the Attorney General's Office detention house for over 80 days, after being named a suspect in the Bank Bali scandal in early June for allegedly violating the central bank's prudential principle in its policy to reimburse interbank loans guaranteed by the government.

Before being detained, Sjahril revealed to the press that President Abdurrahman Wahid and Attorney General Marzuki Darusman had asked him to quit his post in return for being freed of any charges or risk being named a suspect and face the legal consequences.

Sjahril's lawyers had three times requested that the Attorney General's Office convert their client's arrest status into a city or a house arrest, but each time the request was rejected.

The lawyers also filed a pretrial lawsuit against Marzuki last month over their client's detention, saying that the arrest was ineffective for the prosecution as Sjahril had only been questioned for two times during his detention. The lawsuit was rejected by the South Jakarta District Court.

One of the lawyers, Mohamad Assegaf, revealed on Tuesday that the team had planned to file a civil lawsuit against the Attorney General's Office with the Jakarta State Administrative Court.

"We will sue the government over the detention and any other measures which we consider a violation of the existing laws," Assegaf said after the third questioning of Sjahril. (bby)