The Murder of Nasrudin Zulkarnaen

Nasrudin Zulkarnaen

Nasrudin Zulkarnaen was a director of PT Putra Rajawali Banjaran. On March 14, 2009, he was shot after playing golf at Modernland in Tangerang, Banten. Contemporary court reporting places the shooting as he was leaving the golf course and travelling home.

The killing quickly developed into a high-profile contract-murder investigation. Police and prosecutors alleged that the shooting had been arranged through a chain of intermediaries, with several men recruited to carry out or facilitate the attack.

The contract-killing prosecutions

Separate proceedings produced convictions for several participants in the operational chain. In December 2009, for example, a Tangerang court sentenced Hendrikus Kiawalen to 17 years after finding that he had recruited another participant to carry out the shooting. Other alleged gunmen and intermediaries were prosecuted in related trials.

The case also reached senior figures. Prosecutors charged former Corruption Eradication Commission chairman Antasari Azhar, businessman Sigit Haryo Wibisono, former South Jakarta police chief Williardi Wizar and businessman Jerry Hermawan Lo with roles in the conspiracy.

Antasari Azhar's conviction

In February 2010, the South Jakarta District Court sentenced Antasari Azhar to 18 years in prison after finding him criminally responsible for instigating the planned murder. Sigit Haryo Wibisono received 15 years, Williardi Wizar 12 years and Jerry Hermawan Lo five years in the same broader prosecution.

Antasari appealed. Indonesia's Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeal in September 2010 and left the 18-year sentence in place. The decision therefore remained a valid criminal conviction even as Antasari and his supporters continued to challenge the evidence and theory of the case.

Why the conviction remained contested

Antasari consistently maintained that he had been framed. His legal team later pursued judicial review and pointed to alleged inconsistencies involving forensic, ballistic and electronic evidence. Nasrudin's own brother also publicly questioned whether Antasari was the true mastermind.

Those challenges are part of the documented history, but they did not produce a judicial acquittal. Crime by Region therefore reports them as contested claims rather than as proof that the conviction was false.

Clemency and release

Antasari was conditionally released in November 2016 after serving about seven and a half years. In January 2017, President Joko Widodo granted six years of clemency from the 18-year sentence.

Clemency changed the punishment; it did not vacate the guilty judgment. Reporting at the time noted that Antasari's lawyer continued to insist that he had not admitted guilt in seeking clemency. The distinction matters: executive mercy and judicial exoneration are not the same legal outcome.

Current status

The murder is classified here as solved and adjudicated because multiple defendants were convicted and the central convictions became legally effective through the ordinary appellate process. The archive also marks the Antasari component as contested because significant challenges to the prosecution theory continued long after judgment.

No later development identified in the reviewed sources overturned Antasari's murder conviction. Accordingly, this page does not label him exonerated, while also avoiding the opposite error of presenting every allegation made during the case as independently proven fact.

Why the case remains significant

Nasrudin's murder became one of Indonesia's most politically charged criminal cases because it combined a contract killing with the prosecution of the sitting head of the country's anti-corruption commission. That political importance does not erase the victim: Nasrudin was the person killed, and the legal controversy should not reduce his death to a proxy battle over public institutions.

The case is also a useful example of why legal precision matters in true-crime reporting. A final conviction, an innocence claim, a failed review attempt and later clemency can all coexist without being collapsed into a single simplified conclusion.