Tommy Soeharto reports 'Gatra' weekly to police

JAKARTA (JP): Businessman Hutomo Mandala Putra lodged a complaint at the city police headquarters on Friday against a weekly that linked his name to a report of the recent arrest of five Indonesian students in a drug raid in Australia.

The youngest son of former president Soeharto insisted that Gatra defamed and slandered him in the report which appears in its latest edition.

Hutomo, popularly known as Tommy, said the report was totally baseless.

"I don't know any of the people who were Gatra's sources," he told reporters after leaving police headquarters with his lawyer H.M. Dault.

In its Oct. 17 edition, the weekly quoted an unidentified source as saying that Ferry, a student arrested in the Aug. 27 raid at a house in Hawthorn, Melbourne, had told police interrogators that Tommy was an important figure in drug trafficking in Australia.

Gatra also quoted a local paper, The Age, which ran a story on Tommy's alleged role under the headline: "Victoria Police investigate drug links to Soeharto family".

The paper suggested that Tommy's alleged involvement could be widely understood as meaning Soeharto's grandson, Ari Sigit Hardjojudanto, who has long been suspected of involvement in the drugs trade in Jakarta, Gatra said.

But the weekly also interviewed Ari, who denied that he or Tommy had played a role in the Australian case.

Gatra also quoted the Victoria Federal Police deputy director for media, Kevin Loomes, as saying the investigation of the case had not yet been extended to Soeharto's family.

The five Indonesian students were caught red-handed using shabu-shabu, a low grade form of heroin which is rare in Australia.

Tommy lodged his complaint during a meeting with Jakarta Police chief Maj. Gen. Noegroho Djajoesman and Jakarta Police Detective chief Col. Gories Mere.

Tommy said the magazine had violated Article 310 and Article 318 of the Criminal Code on defamation and slander respectively, adding that the case was a crime and could not be resolved under existing press regulations. (emf/ind/bsr)