Sri Bintang Pamungkas rubbishes prosecutor's evidence
Sri Bintang Pamungkas rubbishes prosecutor's evidence
JAKARTA (JP): Outspoken politician Sri Bintang Pamungkas has asked the Central Jakarta district court to free him of all charges because the public prosecutors had failed to prove him guilty of slandering President Soeharto.
Sri Bintang, a former member of the House of Representatives, told the panel of judges on Wednesday that the chief of the team of prosecutors, P. Sitinjak, had not used the original recording of his speech.
The prosecutors claimed that the tape held a recording of a discussion at the Berlin Technische Universitaet during the course of which Bintang allegedly called Soeharto a dictator.
Two weeks ago Sitinjak asked the court to sentence Sri Bintang to four years in jail for defaming President Soeharto.
Bintang said yesterday that the voice on the tape played by Sitinjak in the court room to support his plea for Bintang's indictment, failed to help the prosecutor's case because it was not his voice on the tape.
"Even if the prosecutors were to use computer technology to prove this is my voice, the nature of this technology, which is wide open to manipulation, would make their "proof" meaningless," said the defendant in his defense statement, which lasted over seven hours.
Bintang had earlier asked the court to bring in Police Capt. Mubyarto, who made the first charge against him based on the tape, to testify.
According to the defendant the officer first discovered the tape and made the transcription.
The defendant also said that the four students, who were flown in by the government from Berlin to testify, were not qualified to support the prosecution because they are relatives of the military attache at the Indonesian Consulate General in Berlin.
"The transcription itself cannot be used in court sessions because it needs to be edited by experts," Bintang said.
He said that the prosecutors have also failed to prove that the tape or its transcription were really from the discussion.
"Using the tape and its transcription as material evidence only demonstrates the prosecutions hard-headedness and highlights the fact the phrases have been taken out of context," Bintang said.
He added that this practice is not very different to that of fascist countries who resort to such authoritarian ways to push political opponents into a corner. Bintang acknowledged that intelligence officers have been tailing him and recording everything he says since 1993.
Mohammad Assegaf, who leads the team of defense lawyers, asked the panel of judges to adjourn the hearing to another day to read their defense statement, but Sitinjak voiced an objection.
Presiding judge Syoffinan Sumantri overruled the objection and declared the hearing adjourned until April 3. (16)