On Monday last week, the police closed in on a room on the sixth floor of the Oval Hotel in Surabaya, the capital of East Java. There they found Aldi Alfarizi alias Kasmo, chair of the Bangkalan Regional Representative Council's (DPRD) Government Affairs Commission. Also in the room was a 16-year-old girl, the daughter of his former wife divorced more than 17 years ago.
Dozens of police surrounded a house in West Jakarta and demanded the occupants inside to open the door. It was just before dawn on Thursday two weeks ago, and the residents had been sleeping when the authorities arrived. Now they could be heard speaking frantically in Chinese as the police prepared to make their move.
THE hearing to request a review of the death sentences on Agus Hadi and Pujo Lestari was brief, lasting less than an hour. It proceeded in absentia, alias without the accused men being present. "I couldn't have the prisoners attend unless proper security was provided," Charles Lubis, Agus' and Pujo's attorney, told Tempo at the Batam District Court of the Riau Islands last Thursday.
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