Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta – A sex-and-murder scandal reached a new climax yesterday when the sacked head of Indonesia's anti-graft commission dismissed claims he forced a beautiful young golf caddy to perform indecent acts on him in a south Jakarta hotel.
Antasari Azhar, a former public prosecutor charged with murdering an alleged rival for the caddy's affections, appeared relaxed in his first court appearance, nine months after being arrested.
His prosecution ties into a life-or-death struggle over how to fight corruption in Indonesia, a question that has increasingly brought into question the transparency of the country's self-proclaimed graft-buster-in-chief, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
The case is one of several testing the powerful Corruption Eradication Commission against the combined dark forces of Indonesia's pre-reform era, which it was designed to clean up, including elements in the police, the Attorney-General's Department and the national parliament.
Mr Antasari's all-day appearance in South Jakarta District Court followed a sensational surprise appearance on his behalf last week by the recently sacked national police chief of detectives, Commissioner-General Susno Duadji.
General Susno is now officially under investigation, after skipping work last Thursday to appear in court, where he denied he had ordered another senior policeman to fabricate a dossier against Mr Antasari.
General Susno is already under a cloud over his handling of an unrelated investigation concerning the CEC, the body Mr Antasari headed until his arrest on the murder charges.
That case was into the mishandling of funds during last year's multi-million-dollar bailout of the ailing Bank Century. The general was ultimately sidelined as chief detective in November after being connected to a plot to discredit two of Mr Antasari's deputies, and after having likened the commission to a "gekko" trying to take on the "crocodile" of the police force.
But General Susno said on Monday he had been forced to send his family into hiding after receiving deaths threats following his support of Mr Antasari last week.
The case against Mr Antasari is intricate, but so far apparently without any smoking-gun proof, leading to suggestions it is related to attempts to bring down the commission by elements of Jakarta's elite feeling under threat.
The man he is alleged to have killed may yet prove to have been a pawn in that struggle, although there are suggestions the murder target might have been silenced by other unidentified blackmail targets.
Mr Antasari is charged with having ordered the shooting assassination of former state-owned company director Nasrudin Zulkarnaen, after receiving death threats via text message from Nasrudin.
The threats were said to have related to a sexual relationship Mr Antasari was allegedly having with a golf caddy, Rhani Juliani, 23, whom Nasrudin had already secretly taken as his third wife.
However, during questioning of Rhani in November, it emerged that her claims of having been sexually molested by the anti-graft chief, including his forcing her to perform sex acts on him in a hotel in Jakarta's Blok M nightclub district, were fabricated.
Mr Antasari yesterday backed that assertion, insisting he and Rhani were sitting on "two separate sofas" during the 15-minute meeting, during which she claimed he unzipped his trousers and molested her.
Nonetheless, prosecutors have continued to allege that threats by the businessman against Mr Antasari over the sexual encounter were the reason for the former's murder.
Mr Antasari denied yesterday he had received any threats from Nasrudin.
Five men have already been jailed over the assassination, which was carried out by two armed motorcyclists as Nasrudin left a Jakarta golf course last March.