A court rejected a request by prosecutors to resume the corruption trial of former Indonesian dictator Suharto, saying he is still too ill.

The head of the South Jakarta district court, Lalu Mariyun, told reporters Friday that he had returned files on Suharto, 80, to the prosecutors' office.

He said a Supreme Court ruling last December, that Suharto senior is too ill to stand trial, is "final" unless the ex-president makes a full recovery. Jakarta prosecutors last week wrote to the court requesting the trial be reopened.

The former general is charged with embezzling some 571 million dollars of state funds during his 32-year autocratic rule which ended in May 1998. "We will accept the files again in the future if Suharto is declared to have fully recovered," Mariyun said.

On Thursday Suharto's youngest son Tommy was charged in a separate proceeding with ordering the contract killing of a Supreme Court judge, a crime punishable by death.

Suharto senior failed to appear at both sessions of his corruption trial in August 2000 and was represented by lawyers. Judges aborted the hearing the following month after doctors said he was too sick and had suffered brain damage from a stroke.

Last December the Supreme Court, in a legal opinion, said the ex-dictator was too ill to stand trial. Suharto, who has been fitted with a pacemaker, has been treated at a state hospital at least three times for various ailments – including the stroke and intestinal trouble – since he resigned in 1998.

He has also suffered breathing and urinary complications and underwent an emergency appendectomy in February last year. After he was admitted to hospital with pneumonia last December, President Megawati Sukarnoputri was quoted by an aide as saying she wanted parliament's approval to drop the corruption charge on humanitarian grounds.

The former president and his family are estimated by Time magazine to have amassed some 15 billion dollars during his years in power.

He stepped down amid widespread riots, as senior political and military supporters withdrew their backing, and now lives quietly at the family home in the exclusive Jakarta suburb of Menteng.