Heru Andriyanto

Former antigraft agency head Antasari Azhar during his trial (JG Phota/Afriadi Hikmal)

SMS Evidence in Antasari Trial Not Valid: Expert

In a day of bad news for prosecutors, experts said that even if an alleged sms text message exists in which accused murderer Antasari Azhar threatens businessman Nasrudin Zulkarnaen, it likely would not be admissible in court.

Witnesses testifying on Tuesday for both the defense and prosecution in the trial of Antasari, the former head of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), who stands accused of masterminding the shooting of Nasrudin, the director of a state-run pharmaceutical company, in March also threw doubt on the existence of the text message.

One expert said he could not retrieve the message from the victim’s cell phone.

Defense witness Andi Hamzah, a law professor from Jakarta’s Trisakti University, said prosecutors would not be able to use the text as evidence even if it existed.

“The Criminal Procedures Code doesn’t recognize text messages as evidence,” Andi told the South Jakarta District Court. “A new Criminal Procedures Code is being drafted by a team of which I am the chairman. The new law may later accept such evidence, but not now.”

According to an earlier witness account, Nasrudin had displayed a text message that he allegedly received from Antasari.

The message, the witness said, threatened Nasrudin not to reveal an alleged sexual encounter between Antasari and the businessman’s third wife, golf caddie Rani Juliani, in a Jakarta hotel.

Andi said he doubted that text messages could serve as valid evidence in a criminal case after an information technology expert confirmed that messages could easily be sent by a third party without the consent of the phone’s owner, or even be sent remotely, without using the owner’s handset.

“So the message shown by Nasrudin to three of his friends is not evidence?” asked Antasari’s lawyer, Ari Yusuf Amir.

“No, not even if a thousand people saw it,” Andi replied, adding that the proposed new law would most likely take into account evidence in the form of text messages, e-mails and recordings of telephone conversations.

Prosecutors have previously referred to the alleged message in Nasrudin’s phone, saying it read: “Keep this between us, if you blow it up, you know the consequences.” The message was reportedly sent sometime in February.

But an IT expert who testified earlier in the day was unable to reopen the supposed message after he was handed Nasrudin’s cell phone on the stand.

“I don’t see it,” said Aldo Agusdian from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). He said the message could have either been deleted or was never sent.

“To find out what happened or track old messages, we need a device called a ‘call detail recorder’ belonging to the cell phone operator concerned,” Aldo said. “But we must have a court order to request that.”

Responding to his remarks, the defense team immediately asked presiding Judge Herri Swantoro to order the operator to check the message. “We have to clarify this matter so we need a court order to check if the message ever existed,” said defense lawyer Hotma Sitompoel.

Herri said the court would consider the request, but warned that there was limited time left in the trial to recall the witness.

In another setback for prosecutors, another IT expert from ITB, Agung Harsoyo, said he could not retrieve a recording on Nasrudin’s cell phone of an alleged conversation between Rani and Antasari. “The handset is broken,” he said.

Prosecutors said that during her meeting with Antasari at the Grand Mahakam Hotel, Rani kept her cell phone connected to that of Nasrudin, who had activated his voice recorder.

Some portions of the conversation were played by the court during the trial last week, but most of the recording could not be heard clearly.

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