Sjahril granted five-day leave

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)