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The Attorney General’s Office has ruled out any possibility of a probe into its handling of the high-profile murder trial of former antigraft czar Antasari Azhar, despite allegations the case may have been fabricated.

Marwan Effendy, deputy attorney general for internal supervision, said on Monday that the trial, which early last year saw Antasari sentenced to 18 years in prison for masterminding the murder of businessman Nasrudin Zulkarnaen, had been carried out by the book.

“We won’t re-examine the case because we haven’t seen anything suspicious about the trial,” he said. “The allegations were made by Gayus [Tambunan] and were perhaps meant to be a distraction.”

Gayus, the former tax official who was last month sentenced to seven years for bribing a judge and police investigators during an embezzlement trial for which he was acquitted in March, suggested recently that the AGO had something to hide about the Antasari case.

Speaking after he was convicted, Gayus said the authorities had refused to name Cirus Sinaga, the lead prosecutor in his first trial, a suspect because they did not want Cirus revealing anything about the Antasari case, which he also prosecuted. In the wake of the allegations, the National Commission for Human Rights (Komnas HAM) announced it would launch an independent review of Antasari’s trial with the help of legal experts and rights activists.

However, Marwan played down the impact of such a probe.

“It’s OK if they want to examine the case for their own interest,” he said. “But they aren’t the judiciary so they can’t change the Supreme Court’s verdict. If a case review is to be filed with the Supreme Court, only Antasari can do that.”

The country’s top court has upheld Antasari’s conviction and 18-year sentence. Marwan also said any findings from the Komnas HAM probe should not trump the legal proceedings.

“Gayus has stirred up this issue and, as a result, there’s now a lot of speculation that Cirus is privy to secret information,” he said.

For his part, Cirus remained tight-lipped about his handling of the Antasari case. His lawyer, Tumbur Simanjuntak, again declined to comment on Gayus’s allegations on Monday.

“We can’t comment on the Antasari case because it has nothing to do with the case facing Cirus,” he said. “Besides, I was Antasari’s lawyer in the murder trial so there’s no way can I comment on the case.”

Cirus, a mid-ranking prosecutor, also previously handled the controversial case against Muchdi Purwoprandjono, the intelligence chief acquitted of murdering prominent rights activist Munir Said Thalib.