Heru Andriyanto – Lawyers for Nazril Irham on Thursday slammed the prosecution for demanding the pop star serve five years in jail for distributing pornographic videos on the Internet despite the lack of evidence connecting him to the crime.
In a closed session at the Bandung District Court, the lawyers demanded that their client, also known as Ariel, be acquitted.
"There is no witness who can tell the court that they saw Ariel distributing the videos," Otto Cornelis Kaligis, head of the defense team, told the Jakarta Globe in a telephone interview after the trial. "We are confident that Ariel will walk out of this a free man."
The defense read a 107-page statement to the court on Thursday, while Ariel read a three-page personal statement, titled "Nazril Irham, a victim of brutality."
Boy Afrian Bondjol, another of Ariel's lawyers, said separately that the Anti-Pornography Law was irrelevant to this case "because the suspected crime, if it occurred at all, occurred in 2005 and 2006, while the law was passed in 2008. The law doesn't apply retroactively."
"More important, throughout the hearings, the prosecutors were unable to present witnesses or evidence to support their claims that Ariel took part in or helped with the distribution of the videos. We simply asked the judges to acquit him on all charges."
Moreover, Boy said Ariel was the victim of "brutal violations" of his privacy.
In addition to the jail term, the prosecution also demanded that Ariel, the frontman for the popular band Peterpan, be fined Rp 250 million ($28,000).
The case was adjourned until Monday, when the court will hear the response of the prosecution.
Several hard-line groups braved the rain on Thursday to rally outside the courthouse to demand Ariel receive the maximum punishment, according to Antara state-run news agency.
The groups, calling themselves the People's Movement to Hang Adulterers and the People's Alliance Against Pornographic Devils, said the singer should be punished because he was supposed to be a role model.
"What Ariel has done has already become well known around the world," one protester said.
Ariel, 29, has been behind bars since he surrendered himself to police on June 22 amid a media circus over explicit videos that allegedly show him having sex, on separate occasions, with two television celebrities, Luna Maya, his current girlfriend, and Cut Tari, a former girlfriend.