Bandung – Two and a half years since homemade sex videos with his celebrity girlfriends became one of the biggest controversies in the conservative Indonesian society, Nazril "Ariel" Irham is once again a free man.
Well, sort of. The front man of the local band Peterpan will be on probation for the next year under strict conditions.
Ariel, convicted for distributing pornographic materials under Indonesia's Electronic Information and Transactions Law, has only served two-thirds of his three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, but he walked out of Kebonwaru Prison in Bandung on Monday with a decree from the Justice and Human Rights Ministry allowing his conditional release.
"Until the end of the period, Ariel will be counseled and supervised by officers from Bapas [a local counseling agency]," Kebonwaru Prison chief Joko Pitoyo said.
"If he violates the conditions of his probation, he will have to serve out the rest of his prison term," he added, saying the conditions included not engaging in any acts that may cause public disorder.
Ariel left the Kebonwaru Prison with drug convict Asep Djamaludin, who is also on conditional release, according to Joko. They were immediately escorted to the Bandung Prosecutors Office to report, and then to the Bapas office to register for counseling sessions.
Joko added that Ariel would have to regularly report to the counseling agency and have to secure permits from it if he wanted to leave Bandung.
Before the conditional release, Ariel received a two-month sentence reduction during Independence Day last year and another one month reduction in last year's Idul Fitri.
Ariel was arrested in June 2010 after videos of his sexual liaisons with two women, identified as fellow celebrities Luna Maya and Cut Tari, began circulating on the Internet.
He was convicted the following January, under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law, despite insisting the videos were leaked without his knowledge by a former Peterpan employee, Reza Rizaldy.
Reza gave the videos to his cousin, who uploaded them to the Internet. Reza was sentenced to two years, while the cousin was not charged. (Antara/JG)