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Indonesian graft fighter given 18 years for murder
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Indonesian graft fighter given 18 years for murder
AFP - Friday, February 12
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JAKARTA (AFP) - – The sacked chief of Indonesia's anti-corruption commission was sentenced to 18 years' jail for murder on Thursday after a trial dismissed as a sham by his supporters.
Former Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) chief Antasari Azhar, 56, had been facing the death penalty in a trial that has been televised live across the nation almost every week for four months.
"The defendant has been found guilty of involvement in a premeditated murder," chief judge Herri Swantoro told the South Jakarta District Court.
Azhar showed little emotion as the verdict was read out, and immediately announced that he would appeal.
"I respect today's verdict but as a citizen and law-enforcer we are going to appeal," he told the judging panel to cheers from his supporters in the public gallery.
Prosecutors also said they would consider appealing the verdict, which was lighter than the death penalty sought by the state.
The case has gripped Indonesia since Azhar's arrest on May 4 last year for allegedly organising the murder of businessman Nasrudin Zulkarnaen, his suspected rival for the affections of 22-year-old golf caddy Rhani Juliani.
The former prosecutor who led a series of successful investigations into corrupt officials and lawmakers maintains that he is being framed in a bid to destroy the KPK and sabotage anti-graft efforts.
One of the officials he put behind bars was the father-in-law of one of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's sons, fuelling speculation of a political conspiracy. Yudhoyono has denied any such plot.
But the case -- seen by many as an attack on the KPK -- has cast a long shadow over Yudhoyono's oft-repeated commitment to clean up government in one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Conspiracy theories have also flourished since police and prosecutors were caught on KPK wiretaps allegedly plotting to frame two other senior anti-graft investigators, exposing what Yudhoyono later called a "mafia" in the heart of the nation's judicial system.
Some 200 supporters of Antasari gathered outside the court and security was tight with 500 police reportedly on hand to prevent unrest.
"I'm in mourning. Antasari Azhar has done a very good job and yet he has had to suffer such a fate. He's been framed by corruptors, he should be set free," human rights activist Vonny Linda Hutagalung told AFP outside the court.
Azhar's lawyers said the prosecution's case relied on circumstantial evidence and the statements of people who changed or recanted their testimony in court.
Much of the prosecution's indictment consisted of lewd details about a supposed hotel-room tryst between Juliani, Zulkarnaen's second wife, and Azhar, who allegedly killed the businessman to stop him exposing the affair.
Azhar admits he met Juliani in the hotel room to discuss his golf club membership, but he denies demanding sex and says the encounter was a set-up to extort money from him.
"We wish to uphold the truth and seek justice because there are some methods (used by the prosecution) which were not consistent and professional," Azhar told reporters outside the court before police led him away.
His lawyer, Mohammad Assegaf, said the state's case had been "engineered from the start".
Zulkarnaen was shot at close range by a gunman riding pillion on a motorcycle on March 14, 2009.
In separate hearings earlier Thursday, judges sentenced three other men allegedly involved in the suspected plot to between five and 15 years' jail. Five other accused have been sentenced to between 17 and 18 years.
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