Chief Justice Suhartoyo presiding over the judicial review hearing of the Extradition and MLA Law, Thursday (26/6/2025). Photo by MKRI/Panji.

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Jakarta (MKRI) – The Constitutional Court resumed the material judicial review hearing of Law No. 1 of 1979 on Extradition (Extradition Law) on Thursday, June 26, 2025. The sixth hearing of Case No. 180/PUU-XXII/2024 was to confirm the Attorney General’s designation as a related party.

“The agenda of today’s hearing is to confirm the position of the Attorney General regarding the petition to be assigned as a related party for the next hearing, including when corresponding through letters. Based on the Justices' Deliberation Meeting, the Court requires that the Attorney General must resign from his/her position before being considered as a related party. However, until the designated time, the Court has yet to receive such a letter. Therefore, the Justices decided that the petition for the Attorney General to serve as a related party cannot be accepted,” Chief Justice Suhartoyo explained.

Furthermore, the Court emphasized that all parties in this case, including the Petitioners, the government, the house, and related parties, consisting of Persaja, KPK, and the Police, were allowed to submit their conclusions within 7 days or by Monday, July 7, 2025, at the latest.

The case was filed by prosecutors who are still in office, namely Olivia Sembiring (Petitioner I), Ariawan Agustiartono (Petitioner II), Rudi Pradisetia Sudiradja (Petitioner III), Muh. Ibnu Fajar Rahim (Petitioner IV), and Yan Aswarih (Petitioner V). The Petitioners challenged the material of Article 21, Article 22 paragraph (2), Article 23, Article 24, Article 33 paragraph (2), Article 35 paragraph (2) letter b, Article 36 paragraph (1), paragraph (3), paragraph (4), paragraph (5), Article 40 paragraph (1), Article 44, and the Elucidation of Article 23 of Law No. 1 of 1979 on Extradition (Extradition Law), and Article 1 point 10 of Law No. 1 of 2006 on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Cases (Mutual Assistance Law).

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It was revealed in the Preliminary Hearing on December 24, 2024, that Petitioner I, in carrying out her duties and responsibilities, often took care of incoming and outgoing extradition requests. She faced challenges and limitations due to the enactment of the regulation regarding the duration of processing mutual assistance requests. In a real case, Petitioner I was asked to facilitate a technical work unit in handling a special criminal case to identify evidence in the form of banknotes, which was suspected to be the amount of 3.3 million US Dollars from Argentina. The Ministry of Law and Human Rights Regulation No. 12 of 2022 on the Handling of Mutual Assistance in Criminal Cases states that the processing time of a mutual assistance request starts from the receipt of the request to the fulfillment and feedback stages.

In the petition, the Petitioners argued that the articles position the Ministry of Judiciary as the central authority in implementing extradition. It is deemed contradictory to the provisions of Article 1 paragraph (3), Article 17 paragraph (3), Article 24 paragraph (3), Article 24 paragraph (3), and Article 28D paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution. To them, extradition and mutual assistance in criminal cases shall be within the law enforcement authority, under the domain of other agencies related to the judiciary, such as the Prosecutor’s Office. As a result, the construction of the norms creates legal uncertainty, and it does not conform to the principles of the rule of law because the current nomenclature of the Ministry of Judiciary No. 1 of 1979 and the Ministry of Law and Human Rights No. 1 of 2006 have been transformed into three separated ministries, namely the Ministry of Law, Ministry of Human Rights, and Ministry of Immigration and Correctional Services. Hence, it has created disfunction and ambiguity regarding the central authority in extradition and mutual assistance in criminal cases.

In the petitum, the Petitioners requested the articles to be declared contradictory to the 1945 Constitution. The Petitioners also asked the Court to declare Article 21 of the Extradition Law conditionally constitutional against the 1945 Constitution and does not have legally binding power as long as it is not interpreted as “In the event that the person concerned is detained, the person shall be released by the Attorney General if within a time deemed sufficient from the date of detention, the President through the Attorney General does not receive a request for extradition along with the documents referred to in Article 22 from the requesting country”.

Author: Sri Pujianti
Editor: Lulu Anjarsari P.
PR: Raisa Ayuditha M.

Translator: Rizky Kurnia Chaesario

Disclaimer: The original version of the news is in Indonesian. In case of any differences between the English and the Indonesian versions, the Indonesian version will prevail.

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