Jakarta – A former Indonesian economics minister under ex-president Suharto on Tuesday took the attorney general's office to court for his alleged unlawful arrest and an illegal probe.

Lawyers of Ginanjar Kartasasmita, 60, who served in several cabinet posts under both Suharto and his successor B.J. Habibie, read out their pre-trial complaints to the South Jakarta court.

Kartasasmita's arrest on Friday, while he was in hospital, was unlawful as it was based on unlawful questioning, they said. "The questioning of Ginanjar Kartasasmita is unlawful and runs against the law because the authority to do so is held by the investigating team of the connectivity court at the central level," they said.

Also, as an active member of the military, Kartasasmita could only be arrested by a superior, the lawyers said.

Lawyers for the attorney general's office brushed aside the accusations as baseless or unwarranted. "The issue of questioning and the issue of detention while under hospital treatment are both matters not covered by the scope of a pre-trial case," they said.

They argued that the detention was legal as it was made under an arrest warrant issued by the deputy attorney general for special crimes dated March 23. The court session was suspended and was due to resume later Tuesday.

Prosecutors arrested Kartasasmita, a retired air force marshal, at Pertamina hospital in South Jakarta on suspicion of corruption linked to projects while he was the mines and energy minister. The arrest warrant was valid for 20 days and can be extended for another 30 days if warranted.

Kartasasmita has insisted he was innocent and said the arrest was politically motivated. Kartasasmita, now a deputy speaker of the national assembly, has been named a suspect in a case in the early 1990s involving PT Ustraindo Petro Gas, a company owned by one of Suharto's sons, Bambang Trihatmojo, and the state oil and gas monopoly, Pertamina. The scandal caused 24.8 million dollars in losses to the state, prosecutors said.

Investigators have said that while Kartasasmita was minister for mines and energy, Pertamina paid the costs of oil development incurred by Ustraindo in four oil fields, although the contracts required the company to cover them. The state lost 18 million dollars.

They also claimed that the terms of the government-company production sharing contract were changed in the company's favour, causing additional losses to the state.

Kartasasmita is credited with negotiating a massive 46-billion-dollar bailout with the IMF after Suharto's fall in 1998 when the Indonesian economy collapsed under the Asian financial crisis.