Jakarta – Indonesia's porous prison system has once again come under scrutiny after the former mayor of Bekasi, ostensibly locked up in a Bandung jail on a six-year sentence for corruption, was seen dining at a South Jakarta restaurant earlier this week.

Mochtar Muhammad, who was sentenced to jail in March 2012 after his earlier acquittal was overturned, was seen having dinner on Monday night with his former lawyer, Sirra Prayuna, before going back to the Sukamiskin prison in Bandung.

Officials from the Justice Ministry's Directorate General of Corrections have confirmed that he left the prison, where most of Indonesia's corruption convicts are held, but could not say why.

Handoyo Sudrajat, the corrections chief, said Mochtar had applied for permission to leave the prison for several hours, and was back by night. Permission is usually given in cases when a prisoner wants to visit an ill relative, and even then, they have to be escorted by prison guards. In Mochtar's case, there was no official reason given for his trip, nor were any guards spotted at the restaurant with him.

Sirra, however, said it was a steaming pile of manure – literally. The convict's former lawyer said that Mochtar left the jail to buy compost for his gardening activities while in prison. While out, he decided to meet up with Sirra to discuss his pending parole request. Sirra did not explain why Mochtar had to go all the way from Bandung to Jakarta to buy fertilizer.

He did, though, claim that the former mayor was on the prison's "assimilation" program, in which he was allowed out of prison for several hours each day to work as a productive member of society, before returning to his cell in at night.

"I got a call from him at 6:30 p.m., asking to meet up. So of course I met him. He said he was out looking for compost," Sirra said. He added that even though he was no longer Mochtar's lawyer, he was still willing to discuss the convict's parole request with him.

Justice Minister Yasonna Laoly, who was inaugurated on the same day that Mochtar went on his jaunt, said he was unaware of the case but would question the chief warden at Sukamiskin about it.

Yasonna spoke during a surprise inspection of Cipinang Penitentiary in Jakarta, another prison known for its unusual concessions to high-profile inmates, including allowing them to have cellphones to run drug-trafficking rings on the outside, have sex with their girlfriends in the warden's office, and even cook meth.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), whose investigation led to Mochtar's jailing, said the case was the first major test for the new minister, who hails from the same party – the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) – as Mochtar.

"He needs to evaluate the officials in charge of [Sukamiskin] prison," Busyro Muqoddas, a deputy chairman of the KPK, said on Wednesday. "If he doesn't handle this case firmly, he's going to be humiliated by his own subordinates, many of whom are responsible for the rot within the system by selling their authority."

Mochtar, arrested by the KPK in connection with four separate corruption cases – including embezzlement of regional funds and bribing environmental officials to award his administration a "clean city" prize – was acquitted by the Bandung Anti-Corruption Court in October 2011.

That ruling was the first, and to date only time that the KPK did not win a conviction in a case that it prosecuted, and raised doubts about the series of questionable verdicts handed down by the Bandung court. The antigraft commission appealed the verdict, and in March 2012 the Supreme Court quashed the acquittal and sentenced Mochtar to six years in prison.

Incidentally, one of the judges who initially acquitted Mochtar, Ramlan Comel, was in March this year named a suspect by the KPK in an unrelated corruption case, and was arrested in August.

Source: http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/bekasi-ex-mayor-graft-convict-surprise-jaunt-prison/