Anthony Deutsch, Jakarta – Indonesia endured decades of bloodshed during Suharto's dictatorship. Yet, in an era when ruthless leaders are increasingly being held accountable, he has eased comfortably into old age without so much as a day in court.
The former dictator has been shielded since his May 1998 ouster by a graft-ridden legal system, government leaders who became wealthy during his 32-year rule and top military loyalists who want to clear his name.
Concerns about his mental and physical health too have kept him from facing trial: A series of strokes in recent years have left Suharto with permanent brain damage and impaired speech.
There is also a foreign hesitance to push justice in a fragile democracy that is a major US ally in the fight against terrorism.
Between 300,000 and 800,000 alleged communist sympathizers were killed during Suharto's bloody rise to power from 1965 to 1968, a spasm of violence led by the Indonesian army and conservative Muslim groups.
His troops killed another 300,000 in military operations against independence movements in Papua, Aceh and East Timor, while hundreds of thousands of others were jailed without trial or disappeared.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, once a general serving under Suharto, is among a stream of high-profile government officials who have flocked to the hospital to visit the former strongman, who is suffering from multiple organ failure and a potentially deadly blood infection.
"As a human being, like other leaders, certainly he made mistakes and committed wrongdoing, but it would not hurt us to thank him and appreciate his achievements and services to the country," Yudhoyono said Saturday.
In the past, concerns about instability in the vast and ethnically diverse archipelagic nation have been cited as reasons not to prosecute the retired five-star general.
Some believed that reopening wounds of the past "might yield a similar meltdown" to the Yugoslav federation, which broke apart in a series of wars in the 1990s after the death of strongman Josip Broz Tito, said Mark Drumbl, director of the Transnational Law Institute at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.
There also were fears his testimony would implicate multinational corporations and foreign governments "that were only too content to do business with him, support him, and make huge profits out of Indonesia's vast natural resources," he said.
Transparency International, a financial watchdog, estimates Suharto and his family amassed as much as $35 billion during his reign, with his six children and inner circle becoming fabulously wealthy running state enterprises. Efforts to recover the money have failed, and only one civil case is pending.
Yudhoyono sent the attorney general to the hospital this week to offer the family an out-of-court settlement for a $1.5 billion suit, seeking to avoid a potentially embarrassing public trial. Defense lawyers rejected the proposal, denying accusations of wrongdoing.
Only one member of Suharto's family has ever served time in jail – his youngest son, Tommy – for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge who had convicted him of graft. He was released in 2006 after spending just one-third of his 15-year sentence in a private air-conditioned cell.
Some critics say Indonesia's judicial system is so crippled by corruption that an international tribunal is needed to address past atrocities.
"If some Suharto family member needs to buy off a judge... that's easy for them to do," said William Liddle, an Indonesia expert at Ohio State University. "Virtually all court decisions in this country are bought."
There is enough evidence against Suharto to try him under international law for crimes against humanity and genocide, said Richard Tanter, a professor of international relations and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic died in UN custody while on trial for war crimes and genocide; Chile's Gen. Augusto Pinochet was facing human rights abuse allegations when he died at age 91; proceedings are under way against Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor; and Cambodia is prosecuting Khmer Rouge leaders for the killing fields.
But previous calls that Suharto be tried for graft and rights abuses have all but died away in the wake of his illness, with even his fiercest critics in the predominantly Muslim country saying this is the time to forgive.
"The idea of pursuing old, sick men is unattractive, but the basic deterrence function of such prosecutions largely outweighs" the drawbacks, Tanter countered. "For the ghosts of all the slaughtered and tortured, I'd like to see justice."