The youngest son of the former Indonesian dictator General Suharto was convicted yesterday of masterminding the murder of the judge who sentenced him to prison for corruption in 2000.
A panel of five judges sentenced Hutomo Mandala Putra - universally known as Tommy Suharto - to 15 years in prison, as the prosecutors had demanded.
Putra, who was also found guilty of two weapons offences and fleeing justice after his previous conviction, was not present to hear the verdict because he claimed to be suffering from a stomach upset and depression and unable to leave his prison cell.
His 20-strong legal team walked out in protest when the judges decided to proceed in his absense. One lawyer said they would appeal immediately against both the reading of the verdict and the verdict itself.
Although this is a significant decision against the family of the once omnipotent general, the sentence immediately drew criticism as being far too light for the severity of the offences. Observers said anyone else would have been sentenced to death, as Putra could have been.
In their verdict, which took six hours to read in a specially converted and heavily guarded auditorium in central Jakarta, the judges said the prosecution had proved that Putra, 40, had paid two men 100m rupiahs (£7,000) to kill Judge Syafiuddin Kartasasmita as he drove to work one year ago yesterday.
"The defendant gave money to [hitmen] to follow his orders," Judge Andi Samsan Nganro said. "The panel of judges does not find reasons ... to erase the accountability of the defendant; therefore the defendant has to be declared guilty."
Kartasasmita was one of the judges who sentenced Putra to 18 months in jail for swindling the government in a land deal. But before he could be jailed, the former playboy and racing driver went underground, and was not caught until November.
The two gunmen were sentenced to life imprisonment in May for the murder.
The judges said they had not imposed a harsher sentence because they thought Putra might have been pressured into the killing, as he was mentally unstable after being convicted of corruption, was still young, and had responsibilities to his wife and child.
Although the verdict was greeted with cheers from the public gallery, many spectators were angered by the lenient sentence.
Kartasasmita's widow said she was "very dissatisfied". "It hurts very much," she said. "This sentence is not enough. I have lost my husband. I have lost everything."
The head of the pressure group Judicial Watch Indonesia, Andi Asrun, said the justice system had handled Putra with kid gloves. "If his last name was not Suharto would he have been treated like this?" he asked. "I don't think so. This might look like a victory for justice but it is really anything but."
One of Putra's lawyers, Juan Felix Tampubolon, said he was very disappointed by the verdict. "We cannot understand it," he said. "There was no damning evidence, it was all circumstantial. We will appeal immediately."
One of Mr Tampubolon's colleagues, Elza Syarief, was investigated for bribing three witnesses during the trial to change their statements, but she was not charged.
Mr Tampubolon insisted that his client was not playing games by saying he was sick, even though prosecutors were not told that he did not want to attend until 10 minutes before the hearing was due to begin.
"He does not have a political sickness and he was not trying to evade justice," Mr Tampubolon said. "He knows that he cannot evade justice - and he does not want to, because he believes he has done nothing wrong."
If the verdict had not been read by next Friday, the prosecutors would have been forced to release him, since his detention time expires then.
The chief prosecutor said yesterday that he was worried that Putra would have fled again if he was not kept in jail.
If is unclear what impact the conviction of his favourite child will have on the 82-year-old Gen Suharto.
He is extremely frail and considered too ill to stand trial for the myriad corruption and other crimes allegedly committed during his 32-year grip on power which ended in economic turmoil and national protests in May 1998.
The verdict is unlikely to convince critics of Indonesia's notoriously corrupt and inefficient legal system that a new era has begun.
Earlier this week the UN special rapporteur on judicial independence said it was among the worst in the world, and corruption was "endemic".