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Jakarta Post

AGO to drop prosecution of Abraham, Bambang, but not Novel

The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) is considering dropping prosecutions of two former Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) leaders Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto, but will continue to bring criminal charges against the antigraft body’s top investigator, Novel Baswedan

Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, February 13, 2016

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AGO to drop prosecution of Abraham, Bambang, but not Novel

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he Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) is considering dropping prosecutions of two former Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) leaders Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto, but will continue to bring criminal charges against the antigraft body'€™s top investigator, Novel Baswedan.

Attorney General M. Prasetyo said on Friday that he had consulted a number of parties, including the National Police and the Supreme Court, before terminating the prosecutions of Abraham and Bambang for the sake of public interest, also known as deponering.

However, Novel'€™s case would receive different treatment, he said.

'€œWe have already asked for their opinions on these two people [Abraham and Bambang]. However, each case must be treated differently and we should not make generalizations. We have different considerations,'€ Prasetyo told reporters on Friday.

Early last year, Abraham, Bambang and Novel were named suspects by the National Police following the KPK'€™s decision to name former police chief candidate Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan a graft suspect.

The two KPK commissioners were charged with minor offenses and forced to leave their posts at the antigraft agency, while the police force also dug up a decade-old assault case implicating Novel.

Since then, President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo has instructed the AGO to resolve the issue, while public pressure has also grown on Prasetyo to end the apparently spitefully motivated prosecutions.

Prasetyo earlier sent a letter to House of Representatives Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, asking it to support the move to drop the case against Abraham and Bambang.

Lawmakers rejected the proposal, accusing the AGO of attempting to share the risk of making the controversial decision.

Separately, National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said he would prefer to have Abraham'€™s and Bambang'€™s cases go to court to allow them to prove their innocence.

'€œOf course the police force would like to have the legal certainty of a court decision to determine whether they are guilty. That is what investigators have hoped for during the whole investigation process,'€ Badrodin told reporters at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta on Friday.

Meanwhile, the victim of Novel'€™s alleged assault, Dedi Muryadi, met with the current KPK leadership on Friday in an effort to ensure the criminal prosecution against the top KPK investigator continues.

Dedi'€™s lawyer, Yulisman, said that the alleged victim had cried as he told the story of how he had been shot by Novel, who was the Bengkulu detective chief at the time.

'€œMy client demands a proper legal process without any intervention. This is a state run on the rule of law ['€¦] It can only be described as persecution if criminal charges are brought against an innocent person. However, in this case, [the assault] did happen,'€ Yulisman said at the KPK headquarters in South Jakarta.

Novel is accused by the police of shooting a robbery suspect during his tenure as Bengkulu Police detective chief in 2004.

The police first reopened the investigation into Novel in 2012 after the antigraft body named then National Police Traffic Corps (Korlantas) chief Insp. Gen. Djoko Susilo a graft suspect.

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