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Indonesia high court overturns Suharto defamation verdict against TIME

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The Indonesian Supreme Court overturned Thursday a 2007 decision against TIME magazine awarding the late former Indonesian president Haji Mohammad Suharto $106 million in damages in Suharto's defamation suit against the publication. Suharto sued TIME over a 1999 article that said Suharto had hidden billions of dollars in foreign banks. The Supreme Court overturned the 2007 ruling, saying that the 1999 article was not against the law and that no press ethics laws were violated. Suharto, who ruled Indonesia from 1967 to 1998, died in late January 2008. In March 2008, an Indonesian court cleared Suharto of charges brought by government lawyers in a civil corruption case against his estate in connection to allegations that he embezzled $440 million from the Yayasan Supersemar, a state-funded scholarship fund, between 1974 and 1998. Earlier criminal corruption charges were dropped in 2006 because Suharto was rendered unable to speak or write as a result of several strokes.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on April 16, 2009 (boomark / email).