Comment: Antasari to file for judicial review

Jan. 21, Online
 
Former Corruption Eradication Commission chairman and murder convict Antasari Azhar will file for a judicial review of his sentence verdict following recent statements made by graft convict Gayus H. Tambunan, Antasari’s attorney Junifer Girsang says.
Junifer said Gayus had mentioned that prosecutor Cirus Sinaga had been involved in a plot to sideline Antasari.
“Based on that new testimony, we will build our judicial review case. We hope Cirus will confess,” Junifer said as quoted by Antara.
Antasari was convicted of murdering businessman Nasruddin Zulkarnaen. The Supreme Court rejected his appeal in September, retaining his 18 years’ imprisonment sentence.

Your comments:

It is worth remembering that former KPK chairman Antasari Azhar is currently serving an 18-year prison term for the murder of businessman Nasruddin Zulkarnaen.
However, the evidence on which he and his “associates” were convicted left room for reasonable doubt about his guilt.
The police certainly did not find a “smoking gun”. Indeed there was evidence that the gun alleged by the police to have been used was not the murder weapon at all.
Tape recordings presented by the police were circumstantial evidence at best, the alleged motive was highly implausible, there was strong evidence of an attempted conspiracy in the meeting of Antasari with Nasruddin’s wife, and witnesses testified that they had been coerced into implicating Antasari.
It now appears that the same high-ranking police officers who accused Antasari were willing to completely fabricate evidence in an attempt to convict other senior KPK officials of crimes they plainly did not commit.
This is surely grounds for suspicion that the case against Antasari might have been similarly fabricated or manipulated and that a grave miscarriage of justice might have occurred.
I can now add that the chief prosecutor in Antasari’s case has been shown to be a crook willing to manipulate evidence for political or financial motives.
John Hargreaves
Jakarta