Indonesia names fourth suspect in alleged wiretapping of President Prabowo

Police in Indonesia dropped a fourth name into the wiretapping scandal late Thursday, identifying a senior law enforcement official only by the initials SU. According to aljazeera.com, the man served as monitoring chief at the country's Criminal Investigation Agency from 2010 to 2019 and later headed its information and technology unit from 2021 to 2026. Local media identified him as Slamet Uliandi. He has not been detained, with police citing a health condition.

Investigators say SU signed off on the operation. Cybercrime unit director Suhermanto told reporters that the other two suspects sought SU's approval before they went ahead with the interception, and again before wiping the records. Police are still working out why anyone wanted to listen in on Prabowo's communications in the first place. So far they have questioned 13 police officers and five criminal and IT experts, and the national police chief has stood up a special team to dig further, spokesperson Trunoyudo Wisnu Andiko said.

The fourth suspect follows three senior police officers arrested on Tuesday, among them former national police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo, who also served as Prabowo's chief of staff and is widely seen as a Joko Widodo loyalist. That arrest is what turned a security probe into a political story, exposing a widening split between the sitting president and the predecessor he once counted as an ally.

The timing is rough for Prabowo. Public frustration is building over his expensive populist agenda, and investor confidence in Indonesia's $1.5 trillion economy has been softening, piling pressure on a president who took office in 2024 after a landslide win as the continuity candidate for Widodo.

Jakarta stayed quiet Thursday and Friday, even with thousands of troops deployed after the revelations surfaced. Military tents and buses dotted the capital, alongside a small number of soldiers. Lawmakers, meanwhile, are weighing a probe into the eligibility of Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Widodo's son — a move that could become the first step toward removing him from office.