T

he controversial assault case involving Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigator Novel Baswedan is set to end today should there be no further legal intervention from law enforcement bodies.

Novel'€™s lawyer Dadang Tri Sasongko said on Thursday the 12-year-old case will automatically be closed if the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO), which earlier withdrew the case from the Bengkulu District Court, decided not to do anything with the case.

The Criminal Code (KUHP) regulates that law enforcement institutions have a maximum of 12 years to investigate and prosecute a criminal case.

After receiving instruction from President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo to settle all controversial cases involving former KPK commissioners Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto as well as Novel, Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo instructed the Bengkulu Prosecutor'€™s Office to withdraw Novel'€™s dossiers to prevent the case going to trial.

Instead of opting to drop Novel'€™s case through a deponering, a legal mechanism covered by the KUHP that allows the Attorney to drop cases if it is in the public interest, the attorney general bought time to keep Novel'€™s dossiers away from the court until the case reached its expiration date on Feb. 18. Prasetyo is preparing to use a deponering to drop Abraham and Bambang'€™s cases.

Dadang criticized the AGO'€™s move to let the case expire, arguing that a trial mechanism will be a better way to prove Novel'€™s innocence.

'€œIt will be more dignified should the case be solved through deponering or by issuing a cessation order, called a SKPP, since through either of the two means members of the public could receive juridical and sociological reasoning behind the cessation of the case,'€ Dadang told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

'€œCase expiration fails to provide resolution to the criminalization process,'€ Dadang added.

He further said that merely letting the case expire would place a psychological and social burden on Novel as such a scheme did not clear the assault accusations made by the National Police.

'€œIt also gives no legal certainty about his suspect status in the case. From another perspective, it also confirms the incompetency of our criminal justice system [to identify which criminal cases are real and which are fabricated],'€ Dadang added.

Contacted separately, Prasetyo said the AGO had made a decision on Novel'€™s case and had instructed the Bengkulu Prosecutor'€™s Office to comply with the order.

However, he refused to explain the decision, saying that the AGO'€™s decision, whatever it was, would be made to comply with Jokowi'€™s order.

'€œ[I'€™ll] let the prosecutor'€™s office explain it as we cannot disclose anything about it now,'€ Prasetyo said.

The cessation of the Novel'€™s case has met resistance from the Bengkulu court, saying Novel'€™s case should go on to be tried because the expiration date was no longer applicable to his case as the AGO had completed the dossiers and sent it to the court on Jan. 19.

Court spokesman Immanuel said that the AGO'€™s decision to withdraw Novel'€™s dossiers on Feb. 2 did not reactivate the expiration date, adding that he expected the prosecutor'€™s office to send back Novel'€™s case to the court in the near future.

'€œAs of today, we have still not heard back from the prosecutor'€™s office. For the court, Feb. 18 is the case'€™s expiration date. The court will probably send a letter to the prosecutor'€™s office to seek explanation [about the delay to send back the dossiers to the court],'€ Immanuel told the Post.

'€œWhen [prosecutors] withdrew the dossiers, they said in a letter that they wanted to complete the dossiers, not to drop the case,'€ the spokesman said.