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The high-profile case that found former antigraft agency chairman Antasari Azhar guilty of masterminding a murder took a turn on Monday when he officially filed an appeal against the conviction that landed him a jail term of 18 years.

Speaking to journalists in a telephone interview, lawyer Juniver Girsang said Antasari deserved unconditional freedom because the court had ignored many key facts that proved he was innocent.

“Antasari must be acquitted because in this case he is responsible for nothing,” Juniver said.

The remarks came shortly after his three staffers visited the South Jakarta District Court to file the appeal documents to be forwarded to the Jakarta High Court.

Juniver criticized the district court for ignoring the fact that Antasari never sent a threatening mobile phone text message to victim Nasrudin Zulkarnaen before the murder in March last year. The message was used by prosecutors as the basis of their indictment and the death sentence demand for Antasari.

“The judges have ignored the fact that the SMS threatening Nasrudin was not sent by Antasari as proven [in one hearing],” the lawyer said. “The verdict didn’t take into account the recording made by Nasrudin and Rani [Juliani] that clearly showed they were attempting to set Antasari up.”

According to the indictment, Antasari sent a text message to Nasrudin saying “you know the consequences” after the victim threatened to reveal the love affair between Antasari and Rani, Nasrudin’s third wife, to lawmakers and journalists. But information technology experts suggested in the court that such a message could easily be sent by a third party using an Internet service, especially as prosecutors failed to prove it had come from Antasari’s cellphone.

Moreover, prosecutors had presented a gun of a different type from the one used in the police reenactment of the case as their evidence, while experts also differed in opinions about the caliber of bullet used in the attack when testifying, he said.

“We hope the Jakarta High Court when reaching their verdict will take into consideration the key facts ignored by the South Jakarta District Court,” Juniver said.

The district court also sentenced businessman Sigid Haryo Wibisono to 15 years in jail for providing financial assistance in the murder and middle-ranking policeman Wiliardi Wizar to 12 years for recruiting hit men to gun down Nasrudin in a mafia-style murder.

Businessman Jerry Hermawan Lo, who was convicted of introducing Wiliardi to the hit men, received a five-year jail sentence for his role.

An earlier trial in Tangerang convicted five men of carrying out the murder and sentenced them to 17 to 18 years imprisonment each.

The Attorney General’s Office lodged its own appeal with the High Court on Feb. 17, arguing that because the prosecution demanded a death sentence for Antasari, the court should have at the very minimum handed down a life sentence.

“The judges should have sentenced him to life in prison at the very least” said Didiek Darmanto, an AGO spokesman.