"Not yet. It is too quick to name someone a suspect," Director of General Crimes of the Police Criminal Investigation Agency (Bareskrim) Brig.Gen. Agus Andrianto said here on Wednesday.
Agus did confirm that Haris has been reported to police over alleged libel, saying reports were received on Tuesday.
Bareskrim is still studying the reports, he said.
Meanwhile Haris Azhar said he was not aware of the report naming him a suspect, but said he did know that the military (TNI) and the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) have reported him to Bareskrim over his articles.
"I was reported to police by TNI and BNN," he said.
Haris Azhar earlier wrote an article "Rotten Story from a Bandit: Testimony from a Meeting with Freddy Budiman at Nusa Kambangan Prison (2014)".
The article by Haris said notorious leader of drug dealer Freddy, who was among the four drug convicts executed last Friday, claimed to have bribed law enforcement officers with hundreds of billions of rupiahs to protect his illicit business in the country.
"Based on my calculation in the years of work to smuggle narcotics , I have given Rp450 billion to BNN officials. I have given Rp90 billion to certain officials of the police headquarters. I even drive using the car of a two star TNI general," Freddy was quoted as saying in 2014.
Haris Azhar admitted to have written the short article and he also said he had given a copy of the article to presidential spokesman Johan Budi.
"I decided to publish the article to send a message that if the government executed this man (Freddy Budiman), it has eliminate a man with significant information to unveil crimes involving officials of state institutions and about hundreds of billions of rupiahs of bribe," Haris said in a news conference at Kontras.
In a regular weekly program of TV ONE television on Tuesday night, a former BNN leader and TNI spokesman regretted that Haris made public his story just after Freddy was dead.
They questioned the authenticity of Freddys statement as written by Haris , saying if Haris came up with the story when Freddy was still alive , Haris would be a hero, with big contribution to unveiling a big case.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2016
