'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.