Richard Ness : Blog : Dad Reads His Pledoi In Court

Dad Reads His Pledoi In Court - 23 Jan 2007
by Eric

On 23-Jan-07 in Manado my Dad read out his written arguments to the court. His written pleading comes one week after his lawyers presented the legal arguments in Pledoi 1& 2 from 9-11 Jan-2007.

The focus of Dad’s pledoi is not on legal and scientific facts but on personal aspects that highlight some of the unbelievable possibilities about human behavior and their manipulations. His pledoi uses pure logic and common sense to prove that no crime was committed and that Buyat Bay is clean. He argues that this whole case is a sham, and the Police and the prosecution simply failed follow their own laws.

The opening remarks of his presentation had a strong impact on the court, and it reaffirmed that this case has been utterly unfair to my Dad. I have attached these opening remarks (Bahasa and English) in this blog.

My Dad also started a new trend in Indonesia by using video clips as part of his pledoi. Typically pledois are long written arguments characterized by monotonous continual reading that go on for hours and days. By introducing video clips of actual hearings, it refreshed the memories of how witnesses from the defense as well as from the prosecution’s side equally agreed that Buyat Bay is clean, people are fine, fish are safe for human consumption and PTNMR had all the permits.

He also provided a detailed witness by witness comparison to show that not a single piece of evidence was presented to the court that could show that there was pollution in Buyat Bay. On the contrary all the evidence decisively proved that no environmental crime happened.

I plan on posting the remaining Pledois on 25-Jan-07. Also at some point I will be creating a new section on this site that will contain all the court documents including some video (some of which was played at today’s Pledoi reading).