Indonesian police launch manhunt for Tommy Suharto

An operation believed to involve more than 100 police officers began after the South Jakarta Prosecutors Office requested help to arrest Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, a flamboyant business magnate and Suharto's youngest son.

Tommy Suharto, 38, has ignored orders from prosecutors to surrender since last Thursday, when President Abdurrahman Wahid formally rejected his appeal for a presidential pardon.

Brigadier General Engkhesman, chief of the national police detective unit, told a snap press conference that authorities believed Tommy Suharto had not left the county and was still in Jakarta.

"Tommy is now on the most-wanted persons list," Engkhesman said. "We hope by tomorrow we can find Tommy and hand him over to the prosecutors office. The police have deployed all operational personnel to find him."

Prosecutors were in route to Tommy Suharto's posh Jakarta villa in hopes of finding him there, but police said they could not enter the compound without a search warrant.

Bob Nasution, one of Tommy Suharto's defense lawyers, demanded that authorities guarantee his client's security when he is incarcerated in Jakarta's Cipinang Prison, saying he had refused to surrender on Tuesday after receiving death threats the previous night.

"Tommy got a telephone call saying that he will be killed once he is in jail," Nasution said. A local online news agency published e-mails from numerous Cipinang inmates who threatened to sodomize Tommy Suharto, a millionaire playboy with a taste for fast cars and female companions, after he is jailed.

Ironically, Cipinang is the prison where Suharto incarcerated numerous political opponents during his 32-year regime.

Iman Santoso, head of the Jakarta office of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, which oversees Cipinang prison, said Tommy Suharto's claims were exaggerated.

Santoso guaranteed his safety, but ruled out separating him from other prisoners. "I think Tommy made such a claim because he is depressed," Santoso said. "We are ready to guarantee the security of everyone serving jail sentences at Cipinang prison."

Tommy Suharto is the first member of the Suharto family to be convicted. In September, his father escaped his own corruption trial due to failing health.

Tommy Suharto came to symbolize the excesses of his father's regime, where presidential children and cronies used his position to building mega-business empires with little or no regard for the law.

But the Suharto clan, which is alleged to have amassed a fortune as high as 15 billion dollars, were swept from power in 1998 amid a popular pro-democracy movement.

The Supreme Court last month overturned a lower court ruling acquitting Tommy Suharto and a business associate in a 1995 land swap with the government that cost the state to lose 11.2 million dollars.

They were sentenced to 18 months and ordered to pay back the state. After Wahid rejected the pardon request, prosecutors and police went to Tommy Suharto's residence last Friday with an arrest warrant, but no one answered the gate.

His defence team said they would not surrender this client until they received a copy of the presidential decree rejecting the pardon. When prosecutors provided a copy on Monday, Tommy Suharto's attorneys demanded an original of the decree.

Their stalling tactics have enraged the public as well as Wahid, who publicly criticized the attorney-general's office for not ordering its prosecutors to seize Tommy Suharto by force if necessary.

(dpa)