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Indonesian Police Forms New Team to Hunt Soeharto's Fugitive Son
Indonesian police have reshuffled a team tasked to track down former president Soeharto's youngest son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, who has been on the run since November to avoid serving an 18 month jail sentence for corruption.
National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Saleh Saaf said the new team would comprise middle-ranking officers, the highest ranking officer is an adjutant commissioner, who has special skills in locating fugitives.
He refused to disclose the size of the new team or identify its members.
"Based on our evaluation and analysis last Friday, we have decided to disband the old team and set up a new one in our search for Tommy," Saleh was quoted by the Jakarta Post Tuesday as saying.
Saleh said many high-ranking police officials have been dropped from the team to allow them to concentrate on other cases.
"We hope that we can arrest Tommy soon," he said, adding that the new team will carry out its operation in secrecy.
Tommy was found guilty of graft in a 1995 land exchange deal which caused the state 76.7 billion rupiah (about US$8 million) in losses. He was sentenced by the court last September to 18 months in prison.
In a bizarre chain of events, Tommy disappeared a day after President Abdurrahman Wahid officially refused to grant his request for a pardon on November 2.
Police have searched for Tommy in dozens of houses in Jakarta, Surakarta, Central Java and East Java. They also drilled into an underground bunker beneath Tommy's house in Central Jakarta, but to no avail.
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