Indonesia jails pop star for porn
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Bandung: Pandemonium broke out at an Indonesian court on Monday as a wildly popular pop star was sent to jail over an Internet porn scandal that has polarised the mainly Muslim country.
Gasps and sobbing erupted inside the packed courtroom and scuffles broke out after a judge ordered Peterpan lead singer Nazril Ariel to spend more than three years behind bars.
"All I could do was cry," said 19-year-old Dwi Agustiani, one of about 150 mostly young female fans who came to support their heart-throb.
"I love him so much and I just want to hear him sing again in public but he can't."
Ariel was found guilty of allowing home-made videos of his sexual liaisons with two television celebrities to be leaked onto the Internet.
The videos went viral in Indonesia, which has some of the highest numbers of social media users in the world.
But they also sparked fury amongst Islamist hardliners in the generally moderate country.
About 500 members of various Islamic groups protested outside the court with banners bearing slogans such as "Banish pornography from the face of the earth".
Some threw rotten eggs at the police van that brought the pop star to court and others attacked his supporters with sticks after the judgement.
"His crime is not just about having sex. He is a moral destroyer," said Rianto Ind, from the Movement for Hanging Adulterers, a radical fringe group.
"He should be given a life sentence so that it will prevent others from doing the same."
Abdul Qohar Al-Qadsi, an Islamist from hardline vigilante group the Islamic Defenders Front, said all Muslims would be disappointed with the 'lenient' result.
"Our hearts have been slashed. We don't want our children to be polluted by what he has done," he said, reflecting the widely held fear that Indonesian teenagers are being battered by an avalanche of Internet smut.
"As a public figure he should know that he had the power to influence so we reject the sentence."
The verdict also sparked a backlash from Ariel's tech-savvy supporters on the Internet, where the most popular Indonesian hashtag on the microblogging site Twitter on Monday was 'FreeAriel'.
"The Pornography Act has been used to criminalise the privacy rights of citizens," one of thousands of Tweets said, referring to a 2008 law prosecutors used to charge Ariel.
Another said: "Dear Ariel, you do not deserve to be punished like this".
Ariel's lawyers have vowed to appeal the verdict.
The singer's pop rock band is one of the most popular in Southeast Asia, with a swag of MTV Asia awards and top-selling albums.
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