JAKARTA - AN INDONESIAN rock star held for more than four months over a homemade sex video that found its way online was finally charged on Wednesday and could face up to 16 years in jail, reports said.
Nazril Ariel, 28, has been charged with distributing pornography under several articles of the criminal code including the 2008 anti-pornography law, The Jakarta Globe reported.
A lawyer for the singer said no charges had been laid but that their client would be held in custody beyond Friday, when many had expected him to be released due to a lack of evidence to warrant a trial.
Ariel surrendered to police on June 22 amid a national scandal over the explicit videos, showing the rock star having sex with two well-known Indonesian female television celebrities.
Dubbed 'Peterporn' after Ariel's band Peterpan, the scandal impelled President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to warn that the mainly Muslim nation was at risk of being 'crushed by the information technology frenzy'. It also triggered calls for monitoring and censorship of Web usage, which has taken off among Indonesia's upwardly mobile urban youth.
The two videos, apparently filmed by Ariel with a mobile phone during the act, spread virally through Indonesian and Malaysian websites but the star has denied uploading them. -- AFP
