'Tempo' v. Tomy plot thickens, lawyers summoned by police
'Tempo' v. Tomy plot thickens, lawyers summoned by police
M. Taufiqurrahman and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post,
Jakarta
A member of Tempo magazine's defense team was questioned by the
National Police on Thursday over his report on two police
officers who allegedly submitted fraudulent documents as evidence
in a libel suit filed by businessman Tomy Winata.
Lawyer Djoko Prabowo said after the inquiry that police
investigators wanted to know when and how the defense team found
irregularities in the documents.
"I told them that the police detectives had indeed fabricated
the documents, it was obvious," he said. "This evidence is
illegitimate."
Djoko said that he had requested the police to summon Tomy.
"Police should question Tomy as he is the one who kept the
documents in the first place," he said.
The defense lawyer also urged the police to speak with Jakarta
Governor Sutiyoso who issued a letter which claimed that he never
received a proposal from Tomy on the reconstruction project for
the Tanah Abang textile market, which was the impetus for all the
current allegations and counter allegations between Tomy and
Tempo.
Adj. Sr. Comr. Tito Karnavian and Adj. Comr. Ponadi were
declared suspects on Tuesday in the alleged use of fraudulent
documents in the dossiers of Tempo chief editor Bambang Harymurti
and journalists Ahmad Taufik and T. Iskandar Ali.
The decision was made following a complaint filed by the
defense team.
The team claimed it found blatant irregularities in the dates
of the documents, evidence that they had been doctored.
A receipt held by Tomy on Tempo's March 3-9 edition, running
the article Ada Tomy di `Tenabang'?, was issued by Ponadi on
March 11 while the police order to "seize" the evidence and to
open an investigation of the case was issued on March 12 by Tito. Similarly,
the letter from Governor Sutiyoso wherein he claims that Tomy
never submitted a proposal to renovate Tanah Abang textile
market, was dated on March 13. The letter was a response to a
letter by Tomy to the governor sent on the very same day.
Separately, Chief Justice Bagir Manan said that the new panel
of judges at the East Jakarta District Court assigned to handle
the libel suit against Goenawan had the right to revoke the asset
preservation order on his house should they find the order
unlawful. Two of the original judges were ordered off the case.
"They can do that because they will hear the case from the
very beginning," he told reporters.
Bagir said the judges might also make other rulings, even if
they were against the decision made earlier by the previous
panel.
Two members of the panel were replaced and no longer handled
the case as "they were reassigned to higher positions."
It is the first time in Indonesia that judges were replaced
while still handling a case and the "promotion" was made very
quickly.
The former panel of judges issued an asset preservation order
on Goenawan's house as collateral to Tomy's demand of Rp 21
billion (US$2.47 million) libel suit.