Jakarta - Indonesian police on Wednesday denied allegations by a police officer that he had been forced to make false statements to implicate the country's anti-corruption chief in a murder case. The allegations by the policeman, on trial for his involvement in the murder of a businessman allegedly commissioned by Antasari Azhar, the sacked chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), further fueled suspicions of a conspiracy to weaken the body.
The police have already been under fire for arresting two deputy chairmen of the graft-busting agency in a move activists said was part of a high-level plot to undermine it.
Police Senior Commissioner Williardi Wizard testified on Tuesday that he was forced by investigators to implicate Azhar in return for retaining his job in the police force.
Wizard faces charges for allegedly hiring two hitmen who shot dead businessman Nasruddin Zulkarnaen, one of whose wives allegedly had a sexual affair with Azhar.
Prosecutors said Azhar had Zulkarnaen killed to cover up his affair with Zulkarnaen's third wife, a golf caddy.
National police spokesman Nanan Soekarna denied Wizard was coerced into making false statements.
"We didn't actually need his testimony to charge Antasari Azhar," he said at a press conference.
Last week, the Constitutional Court released wiretapped recordings which revealed an alleged plot to frame the two deputy chairmen of the commission, Bibit Samad Riyanto and Chandra Hamzah.
The uproar over the recordings prompted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to set up a eight-member panel to investigate the allegations.
The team concluded Monday that there was no evidence to charge the two commissioners.
The case has raised questions about Yudhoyono's determination to fight endemic graft, especially in the notoriously corrupt judicial system.
Public pressure has forced the national chief of police detectives, Sisno Duadji, and Deputy Attorney General Abdul Hakim Ritonga to resign after their names were mentioned in the recordings.
The perceived scandal has transfixed Indonesians. Thousands of people have staged street protests and more than 1,000,000 have joined a Facebook page in support of the commissioners.
The KPK, set up in 2003 to fight corruption in one of the world's most graft-prone nations with the power to arrest and prosecute, has been widely praised by the public for a series of successful prosecutions of high-profile offenders.
Legislators, governors, former ministers, businessmen, one prosecutor and top central bank officials, including an in-law of Yudhoyono, have been jailed by a special corruption court.
