Indonesia: Prabowo sacks his chief of staff and speaks of treason
Listyo Sigit Prabowo, who ran the National Police until October 1, 2026, was removed from the palace on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, three days after his arrest with two other police generals on charges of tapping the phones of the president, ministers and journalists. The case is the visible part of a fight for command of the security apparatus of Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
President Prabowo Subianto dismissed his chief of staff, General Listyo Sigit Prabowo, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, three days after the general was detained with two other police officers on charges of illegally tapping the phones of the president, ministers, politicians, journalists and business figures. A presidential spokesman said the conduct may amount to an act tending toward treason.
Listyo ran the National Police from 2021 until October 1, 2026, and had taken up the palace post a month before his arrest. With him were detained Inspector General Ahrie Sonta Nasution, head of the police legal division, and Eko Hadi Santoso. The three were held on Sunday, November 1, 2026, on accusations of illegal interception of communications, unauthorized access to electronic systems and deletion of data, crimes that carry up to 10 years in prison, according to the Associated Press (AP), Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters and Deutsche Welle (DW).
What the microphones reached
The intercepts, according to the accounts published by the Indonesian press and reported by the international agencies, covered the president, his ministers, politicians, journalists, civil society organizations and businesspeople, and ran through 2025 and 2026, part of the period in which Listyo commanded the police. The accusation also alleges that the three ordered, in late October 2026, the deletion of files containing recordings — the act that turned an investigation into a case about the destruction of evidence.
The palace’s word is broader than the charge. A presidential spokesman described the conduct as something that may tend toward treason, a formulation that in Indonesian law points to an act against the state rather than to the interception itself. The government says it has found no proof of a coup attempt, and the Justice Minister, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, said there are preliminary indications of something beyond the tapping while the motive remains open.
The troops in the street
On Monday, November 2, 2026, the army deployed 2,100 troops in Jakarta, and the deployment reached 20,980 soldiers, with another 13,140 on standby. The government denies any link to the police case and describes the movement as standard procedure. The calendar is what the denial has to explain: the arrest came on Sunday, the deployment on Monday, the dismissal on Wednesday.
Ariyo Windutomo took over the chief of staff post on an interim basis. The government announced a review of wiretapping procedures with the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN), the part of the response that addresses the instrument: the rules under which police may listen, and who authorizes it.
The wire is the visible part of the case. What the case exposes is who commands the police, and for whom the police collects what it collects.
Indonesia is the largest economy in Southeast Asia, and its National Police is one of the largest security institutions in the region, with its own command hierarchy, its own intelligence units and a reach that extends from the capital to the district level. A general who ran that structure for five years and then moved into the palace carries both the institution’s loyalty networks and its files. Removing him from the cabinet and putting him in detention is an operation against a network, and the treason language measures how much the palace believes that network outlives the man.
The timing matters for the same reason. The arrests came on Sunday, the troops on Monday, the dismissal on Wednesday, and the charges were announced while the investigation was still defining its scope. A security apparatus that loses its internal monopoly on information settles the dispute in the appointments that follow as much as in a courtroom: in the officers who keep their posts and in the files that were deleted before anyone arrived.
What is still missing
None of the three has spoken in public. The motive for the intercepts has not been established officially, nor has the objective. It is not known whether the investigation will reach the police command that succeeded Listyo, who else gave orders, or which political actors received what the microphones collected. The government’s review of wiretap procedures has been announced without a date, a text or a body with the power to enforce it.
The question the case leaves open is who answers for an institution that can listen to the president and whose commander answers to the president: the general who ordered the taps, or the chain of command that made the order possible and survives him.