Jakarta Fills With Troops Amid Wiretap Probe

Indonesia has deployed more than 20,000 troops and other personnel to Jakarta as authorities investigate allegations of illegal wiretapping that they say targeted President Prabowo Subianto and others.

The confirmed facts are heavy on force and lighter on explanation. Three senior police generals have been detained, according to DW, and one of them is Listyo Sigit Prabowo, the former national police chief who became the president’s chief of staff last month. He is not related to the president.

Investigators are accusing the detained officers of illegally tapping the phones of the president, journalists, politicians and business people. The suspects have not responded publicly to the allegations. If charged and convicted over unlawful surveillance, they could face prison terms of up to 10 years.

The state has chosen an unusually muscular public posture. Vice Admiral Yayan Sofiyan said the number of troops and personnel sent into the capital had passed 20,000. Armed forces spokesperson Major General Muhammad Nas said the movement was standard procedure for maintaining national security.

That may be true. It is also not the same as an explanation for why such a large deployment was necessary at the same moment the political system is digesting allegations that reach into the president’s own circle. Authorities have not officially confirmed that the troop movement is connected to the wiretapping case.

The presidential palace has framed the alleged surveillance in much harsher terms, saying the operation against Prabowo could be regarded as an act “tending towards treason.” That language raises the political temperature faster than the legal one. Indonesia’s senior minister for legal affairs said the government had not yet determined the motive.

So far, the public record supports a serious criminal investigation, not a settled account of who ordered what or why. Adrianus Meliala, a criminologist at the University of Indonesia and former National Police Commission commissioner, told DW there was strong suspicion the wiretapping served interests outside the state or the police. He also said that if the allegations are proved, the case could be read as political maneuvering.

What has changed already is plainer than the motive. Senior police figures are in custody. The president’s chief of staff is under investigation. The military presence in the capital has swelled. The government has shown it can mobilise coercive power quickly, while leaving the central link between the scandal and the troop deployment officially unstated.