Suharto Charged With Theft

Former President Suharto will be charged with corruption and pilfering more than $150 million in state funds through a maze of personally controlled charities, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The former dictator faces life in prison if found guilty, although he has been offered a pardon by the reformist head of state Abdurrahman Wahid if he returns the money.

Suharto, 79, ruled Indonesia with an iron hand for 32 years until 1998. He is now under house arrest at his Jakarta home, where he is recuperating from a series of strokes.

His defense lawyers condemned the prosecution as being politically motivated and said their client is too sick to face trial. They said he has permanent brain damage and has lost much of his memory.

Attorney General Marzuki Darusman, a former human rights activist at the height of Suharto's reign, completed the case against Suharto Wednesday night.

Emerging from a meeting with state lawyers, he said formal charges would be filed in a Jakarta court soon before a trial scheduled to start next month.

"The prosecution believes there will be no problem with his health condition," he told reporters.

Muhammad Assegaf, one of Suharto's attorneys, criticized the prosecutors as ignoring "the condition of Suharto, who is ailing and has memory problems."

Bringing Suharto to trial will be a crucial test of Indonesia's resolve to roll back years of authoritarianism and corruption.

After Suharto quit two years ago, the archipelago nation began an ambitious transition to democracy. The change has proven difficult and has been marred by entrenched graft, a deep economic crisis and outbreaks of sectarian and communal violence, in which thousands have been killed.

Critics claim that Suharto amassed billions rather than millions of dollars through corruption. Prosecutors have said they limited their investigation only to the role of the foundations and the missing $150 million to better ensure a conviction in what could be a landmark trial.

Suharto, a retired five-star general, has denied any wrongdoing.

Since he stepped down, student protesters have regularly clashed with security forces on Jakarta's streets demanding that Suharto be imprisoned.

Darusman, the attorney general, said Suharto would be charged with violating an anti-corruption law that the ex-dictator himself decreed in 1971, five years after he seized power amid political chaos.

Suharto, who prided himself on bringing stability and development to Indonesia's 210 million people, is accused of enriching himself, his family and cronies in his capacity as chairman of several charitable foundations, which allegedly siphoned off a fortune in state money.

Some of the foundations took compulsory levies out of the salaries of millions of government workers and were also generously supported through state funding.

They were set up to advance a range of social causes. Critics have long said they were only a front to bankroll massve business empires for those within Suharto's circle.

"He is suspected of having caused a total loss of 1.4 trillion rupiah ($155 million) to the state," said Antasari Ashar, a spokesman for the attorney general's office.

By GEOFF SPENCER