Apriadi Gunawan, Medan – Fourteen people who have been sentenced to various prison terms by the Medan Corruption Court in North Sumatra are reportedly still free and carrying on with their daily lives.
Those sentenced include suspended Binjai legislative speaker Haris Harto, who was sentenced to two years; former Medan Development Planning Board (Bappeda) head Harmes Joni (18 months); Binjai's National Sports Council secretary Akhmad Kuasa (one year); PT Indah Karya director Fadjrif Bustami (one year) and Medan municipal official Susi Anggraini (two years).
The court reportedly has yet to issue letters authorizing their arrests.
The Medan Legal Aid Institute (LBH) plans to file a report with the Judicial Commission against the Corruption Court judges who were said to have allowed the convicts to remain free. The commission was asked to investigate the case.
LBH Medan director Nuriono voiced suspicion over the judges' reasons for not ordering the convicts' imprisonment.
"This is weird, because the graft convicts have not been imprisoned, but those involved in petty crimes are often detained immediately. This is discriminatory and at the same time proves that our law enforcement is a failure," Nuriono told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
He said his institute suspected there was a conspiracy behind the judges' decision of not ordering the arrests. He added that the Medan Corruption Court often ruled in favor of graft suspects who had been legally proven guilty.
Medan Corruption Court spokesman Ahmad Guntur, who is also a judge at the court, acknowledged that 14 graft convicts had been found guilty and sentenced by judges but not detained.
Guntur said one of them was Medan municipality master plan official Susi Anggraini, who was found guilty of corruption related to the Medan master plan project in 2006. "I did not issue an order to detain Susi because she was never detained from the start of the legal process," Guntur told the Post on Wednesday.
Guntur said that other judges did the same, because in general many offenders had never been detained after being tried at the Corruption Court, so the judges did not feel that it was their responsibility to detain them.