T

he government has launched a website dedicated to criminal court procedures to provide the public with information about the legal process and the legal details of ongoing cases.

The website (acarapidana.bphn.go.id) is expected to serve as a database for all legislation concerning criminal court procedures.

The website, managed by the Law and Human Rights Ministry, sourced much of its information from the Criminal Court Procedures (KUHAP) and other related regulations.

“By browsing the website, the public as well as legal practitioners will understand that there are other sources of criminal procedure legislations aside from KUHAP,” legal practitioner Narendra Jatna said after a seminar on the improvement of criminal procedure legislations on Wednesday.

The seminar was held as part of the website launch.

Ideally, Narendra said, KUHAP should have covered all procedural laws in the legal system. In reality, however, there are many other subsidiary rules such as circulars from the Supreme Court (SEMA) that have often been left unnoticed.

“All of this time we have refered only to KUHAP which evidently has not been updated for 30 years.”

Recently, a public outcry broke out throughout the country following many unjust legal cases in which petty crimes received heavy sentences while high-profile corruption cases ended up with lenient verdicts.

One such case was that of a 15-year-old boy identified as AAL who was quickly found guilty of stealing a police officer’s flip-flops by the district court in Palu, Central Sulawesi.

The boy was forced to stand trial and initially faced a possible five-year prison sentence, about the same as major corruption convicts have received. The district court found the boy guilty and sent him back to his parents despite the fact that the prosecutors had failed to present evidence during the court hearing.

Narendra said that most of the legal practitioners frequently looked to the KUHAP as their main reference while in fact it is not very comprehensive. Sometimes, it is not fit for cases such as the “flip-flop theft”.

The case was prosecuted based on a report by the policeman. In addition, cases such as AAL’s should be treated wisely and the convict should be given an appropriate punishment, for example, community service, he added.

Lawyer Luhut M.P. Pangaribuan said the creation of the website was a good idea mainly because KUHAP could not always be relied upon.

“For example, there’s a conflicting procedure between the Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK] and the police on whether a witness should be accompanied by a lawyer during questioning at the KPK,” he said.

“According to the KPK, the witness is not allowed to be accompanied by the lawyer during questioning, but the police allow it.”

Meanwhile, Law and Human Rights Minister Amir Syamsuddin said that the government had completed a draft of the KUHAP revision bill and was looking forward to bringing it to the House of Representatives.

“The draft is adequate academically,” he said as quoted by Tempointeraktif.com.

Amir said that the ministry had been prioritizing the bill since 2009, while the Criminal Code bill would be prioritized in 2012. (rpt)