Vaudine England, Jakarta – A man described by his friends as a "likable mafioso" has been scooped up in recent legal moves against people suspected of attacking Megawati Sukarnoputri's party headquarters in 1996.

Yorrys Raweyai, deputy chairman of the Pemuda Pancasila youth organisation, was taken in for questioning about his alleged role in providing a mob of attackers to support what were said to be government-backed efforts to unseat Ms Megawati as head of the Indonesian Democratic Party.

Activists defending Ms Megawati's office on July 27, 1996, were first besieged then attacked by mobs. The attacks were thought to have been arranged by senior military officers as part of attempts by the then president, Suharto, to destroy Ms Megawati and the reform movement which eventually unseated him.

Mr Raweyai has now reportedly admitted the Jakarta Military Command ordered him to mobilise his forces ahead of the July 27 riots of 1996 but denied that he or his organisation took part in the attack.

That Mr Raweyai is now falling victim to the crusading zeal of official investigations into a series of recent traumas in Indonesian politics is an interesting sign of how those politics are changing.

"When I was a Golkar member of parliament," recalled one source, in a reference to Mr Suharto's election-winning machine, "we all knew Yorrys. If you were going out of town and wanted a mass gathering to greet you wherever you were going, you just called Yorrys.

"He was the errand boy. He's a nice guy if you know him but yes, he does earn his living from mafia-style business." Meanwhile, the sons of the Pemuda Pancasila chairman, Yapto Soerjosoemarno, have been questioned several times in connection with at least three murders in recent months.

Accusations against the youth group paint it as one of several which played important, albeit shadowy, roles at most key moments in Indonesian history. Such turning points date back to the independence struggle itself, through the trauma of 1965-67 and some of Mr Suharto's domestic battles to the East Timor debacle.

The legal process against Mr Raweyai and others can be expected to be slow, but his apprehension is a significant fresh move in the continuing tug-of-war between old politics and new.