Tommy to file motion for review of his case

JAKARTA (JP): Defense lawyers for Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, the youngest son of former president Soeharto, will soon file a motion for a review of the Supreme Court's verdict last month which sentenced their client to an 18-month jail term.

The appeal will be the second legal move made by Tommy after he was convicted for a Rp 95.4 billion (US$11.2 million) land exchange deal between wholesale firm PT Goro Batara Sakti, whose shares were partly owned by Tommy, and the State Logistics Agency (Bulog). Earlier, he had appealed for a presidential pardon

"We will submit the motion to the South Jakarta District Court next week, after we finish drafting it," one of the lawyers, Nudirman Munir, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday evening.

Nudirman said the team had sufficient grounds for maintaining its client's innocence, including new evidence only recently uncovered by the lawyers.

"Until we have submitted the appeal to the district court, we will keep it a secret.

"All I can tell you is that the evidence is related to the outcome of an extraordinary shareholders' meeting of wholesale firm PT Goro Batara Sakti," he said.

Nudirman also said that the Supreme Court judges had made several errors in law in their judgement, which overturned the verdict of the South Jakarta District Court issued last year. The lower court had acquitted Tommy of all charges.

"Tommy was freed by the district court. By law, the prosecutors cannot file an appeal for a review to the Supreme Court where a defendant has been cleared of all charges," he said, referring to Article 244 of the Criminal Procedures Code.

Nudirman said the judges had been unfair in ordering Tommy to repay 80 percent of half of the state losses as they believed Tommy held 80 percent of the shares in PT Goro Batara Sakti, the company which made the swap deal with Bulog.

"The one who holds 80 percent of PT Goro shares is PT Humpuss of which Tommy holds 60 percent. The judges should have ordered PT Humpuss to pay the remaining 40 percent of the Rp 32.3 billion that my client has been ordered to pay," he told the Post.

Separately on the day, Minister of Justice and Human Rights Yusril Ihza Mahendra said that Tommy's move to file an appeal for a review of the case and to also seek a presidential pardon, contradicted the law as it stood.

"It's not prohibited by the law. But, common sense says that filing both appeals is contradictory. Therefore, it's illogical to file both appeals in one case," Yusril told journalists at his office.

He said that unlike the appeal for a presidential pardon, the appeal for a review of the case would not postpone the execution of the Supreme Court's verdict.

Yusril said that his office had yet to receive Tommy's appeal for a presidential pardon.

"It (the appeal) is still in the hands of the judges. From the time the appeal arrives in my office, I will need less than a week to reach a conclusion on it," he added. (01/bby)