The former top officer of Indonesia’s National Police, Listyo Sigit Prabowo, has been arrested along with two other people for his alleged involvement in an espionage operation against the country’s president, Prabowo Subianto, as part of an investigation into alleged illegal wiretapping that also implicates other senior Indonesian officials.
Listyo, removed from his post on October 1, was subsequently appointed head of the Presidential Secretariat in the context of a government reshuffle. In total, the authorities have detained three alleged suspects, according to what the head of the Criminal Investigation Agency of the National Police, Asep Safrudin, explained, who has not officially provided their identities.
However, the other two suspects have been identified as the person responsible for the Legal Division of the National Police, Ahrie Sonta Nasution, and the Police Inspector General Eko Hadi Santoso, according to information from the newspaper "Kompas".
"Investigators have pointed to three suspects identified by the initials LSP, ASN and EH. Another person, identified as SU, is still being questioned in the capacity of a witness," Asep said, who stated that all of them are, for the moment, under custody at the headquarters of the General Headquarters of the National Police.
The police chief detailed that the plot came to light on October 30, after several officers, upon learning of the alleged activities of illicit phone interception, decided to report the matter to the competent authorities.
"The suspects would have intercepted, without following the appropriate procedures, the calls from the phone numbers of the country’s president, state officials, political figures, members of the media, leaders of civil organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as businesspeople," he explained.
Investigations indicate that the wiretaps were carried out outside the established legal procedures between 2025 and 2026. "These numbers were intercepted without any connection to any police process, nor within the scope of that process, as required by the applicable laws," Asep pointed out.
According to Asep himself, in October 2026 those involved would have ordered the deletion from the Police’s Legal Interception Management System (LIMS) of the files that contained the intercepted communications, with the objective of eliminating possible evidence.