An Indonesian police officer facing a 15-year sentence for large-scale timber theft is at large after he was allowed to leave prison without an escort to seek medical treatment, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency.
The state prosecutor’s office has created a team to go after former chief brigadier Labora Sitorus in Raja Ampat, West Papua. He has been added to the province’s most-wanted list.
“When convicted timber crooks are allowed to simply waltz out of prison and remain at large for 10 months without their absence being reported, and when that convicted criminal is a policeman accused of bribing senior police officials, Indonesia looks like a mafia state,” said EIA Senior Campaigner Jago Wadley in a statement.
The officer has been out of prison since March 2014, just a few months after he was convicted of illegal logging.
He was also later convicted of money laundering after an appeals court overturned a lower courts opinion that saw nothing illegal about the $127 million USD the prosecutor said had passed through his accounts.
