Three police generals detained over phone taps on the president

Three senior police generals are now being held in a cell at their own headquarters in Jakarta. The Associated Press, in a report carried by Nikkei Asia, says they are suspected of running phone taps without legal permission, and the list of people whose calls were intercepted starts with President Prabowo Subianto. The most senior suspect is Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo, who now heads the presidential chief of staff's office and was national police chief during the years under investigation. The other two are Insp. Gen. Ahrie Sonta Nasution, who leads the police legal division, and Insp. Gen. Eko Hadi Santoso, an instructor at the police training institute.

Asep Safrudin, head of the police Criminal Investigation Agency, told reporters the taps ran between 2025 and 2026 and reached well past the president. Police say the targets included state officials, politicians, media figures, community leaders, NGO activists and businesspeople. Phone numbers were allegedly fed into LIMS, the "lawful interception" system that is only supposed to carry taps approved through proper channels, without the checks a 2010 police regulation requires. Police also say the suspects recently ordered the stored recordings deleted to cover their tracks. Investigators have questioned 10 witnesses and three expert witnesses and seized 11 mobile phones, an iPad and four flash drives. The charges come under the new Criminal Code and the electronic information law, with the heaviest carrying up to 10 years in prison.

What nobody will say yet is why. Safrudin would only tell the news conference that "the inquiry remains ongoing". Yusril Ihza Mahendra, the coordinating minister for law and human rights, said investigators found no sign of treason, then added: "This is not a minor issue, it is a serious matter for any country." Neither Prabowo nor the three generals had responded publicly.

Why it matters

If you organise, report, or run a business that deals with the state, the question is whether your number was on that list too. Police are now investigating their own former chief, so the test is how far the case goes: whether it names who ordered the taps and why, or stops at three men and a pile of seized phones. For anyone who has handed sensitive information to officials in the last two years, assume less privacy than you thought you had.