Cut Tari: The Man was Ariel

BANDUNG, KOMPAS.com - An Indonesian court played sequences from a rock star’s sex videos at his trial on Monday for allegedly spreading the clips on the Internet in breach of an anti-pornography law.

The closed hearing also heard testimony from television celebrity Cut Tari, 33, who told reporters outside court that she had admitted to having sex with singer Nazril Ariel, 29, in one of the videos.

If convicted, Ariel faces 12 years in jail and fines of up to six billion rupiah (672,000 dollars) for offences including distributing pornography on the Internet.

“I confessed that it was me in the video and the man was Ariel,” said Tari, wearing a black blazer and accompanied by her husband.

Reporters were not allowed inside the courtroom in Bandung, West Java, but they were allowed to peer through the windows. They saw Tari approach the bench to view a brief segment of one of the offending videos on a laptop.

The trial is being held behind closed doors to protect public morals in the mainly Muslim country, where the sex scandal — dubbed “Peterporn” after Ariel’s band Peterpan — has caused a national sensation. A second X-rated video widely distributed online earlier this year apparently features Ariel with another television personality, Luna Maya, 27.

Defence lawyer Alfian Bonjol said however that Ariel denied appearing in the steamy sex tapes. “My client denied that it was him in the video,” he told reporters, dismissing Tari’s testimony without further explanation.

Prosecutor Rusmanto said that according to Tari’s testimony, the video was made between 2005 and 2006. The clips have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people online and sparked fears about immorality spreading among the Southeast Asian country’s youths through the Internet.

Islamic hardliners have called for the rock’n’roll singer to receive the maximum punishment. Some have called for Tari to be publicly stoned to death for adultery. About 40 Muslim extremists shouted slogans outside the court and trampled on pictures of Ariel, Maya and Tari.

Ariel has been detained since he surrendered to police on June 22 amid a media circus over the explicit videos. Neither Maya nor Tari has been charged with any offence. Both women have lost lucrative marketing deals as a result of the scandal.