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ormer Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) commissioner Busyro Muqoddas has criticized South Jakarta District Court judge Yuningtyas Upiek Kartikawati'€™s decision to order the antigraft body to drop its investigation into former Makassar mayor Ilham Arief Sirajuddin.

Busyro said the judge had overstepped her authority in dealing with the pretrial mechanism.

A former Judicial Commission chairman, Busyro said that a pretrial mechanism, which could only last seven days and be heard by a single judge, did not have the authority to examine preliminary evidence that law enforcement institutions used as a basis to name an individual a suspect in a criminal case.

Busyro further said that it was the panel of judges at the Jakarta Corruption Court, which assigns five judges to examine a graft case for at least two months, that had the authority to examine KPK evidence and make a claim on whether the evidence was valid.

'€œI think this practice [pretrial mechanism] should be subject to scrutiny to see whether our Criminal Law Procedures Code [KUHAP] allows a pretrial hearing, which is presided by a sole judge, to examine the quality of evidence used by law enforcement agencies in naming a suspect,'€ Busyro said on Thursday.

The verdict on Ilham was the first to be delivered following a recent ruling by the Constitutional Court (MK), not the Supreme Court, as previously reported, which allows suspects in criminal cases to file a pretrial motion to challenge the legality of a probe launched against them.

The Constitutional Court issued the ruling on April 28 in response to a judicial review request from PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia official and graft convict Bachtiar Abdul Fatah, who in 2013 was sentenced to two years in prison in an environmental project graft case.

Last year, Bachtiar won his pretrial lawsuit to challenge his suspect status and was temporarily released, but the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) later decided to proceed with the case.

The Chevron official hired lawyer Maqdir Ismail, who had also served as legal counsel to National Police deputy chief Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan when filing a pretrial petition against the KPK at the South Jakarta District Court in February.

Budi had his pretrial petition granted by the court.

The KPK later dropped its bribery investigation into Budi following the pretrial victory, which legal experts deemed contradictory to the KUHAP.

 Busyro also blamed the Constitutional Court ruling for the KPK'€™s setback, saying that the ruling, which had not been unanimously agreed to by all nine court justices, needed further discussion, or even revision if possible, on how it should be implemented in the future.

'€œThe MK ruling should be tested by experts and legal practitioners [before implementation], not to mention that three [of the nine] justices had dissenting opinions on it,'€ Busyro said.

Meanwhile, acting deputy KPK chairman Johan Budi said that the antigraft body would suspend its investigation into Ilham, but emphasized that it was just a matter of time before the KPK opened a new probe into the former mayor in the Rp 500 billion (US$38 million) graft case involving city-run water company (PDAM).

'€œThe KPK will order a new investigation after we have studied the pretrial ruling thoroughly,'€ Johan said on Wednesday.

Yuningtyas ruled against the KPK after the antigraft body presented only copies of documents on investigation evidence in Ilham'€™s case during the one-week hearing.

The KPK insisted that revealing the original documents in a public hearing could compromise the ongoing investigation, but Yuningtyas said that she would only accepted the KPK'€™s pretrial arguments if it could provide original copies of the investigation documents during the pretrial hearing.