Jakarta. Former Youth and Sports Minister Roy Suryo has been named a suspect by Jakarta Metropolitan Police for alleged defamation and spreading false information, accusing former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo of using a fake university diploma.

The decision followed a months-long investigation involving experts from multiple disciplines and testimony from more than 150 witnesses, police said on Friday.

Jakarta Police Chief Inspector General Asep Edi Suheri said investigators reviewed 723 documents and other materials, including the original diploma issued by Gadjah Mada University (UGM), which confirmed its authenticity. The finding was further validated by forensic analysis conducted by the National Police Forensic Laboratory.

“The investigation involved experts in criminal law, information technology, linguistics, legal sociology, mass psychology, social communication, and digital forensics,” Asep told reporters. “We also consulted institutions such as the Press Council, the Central Information Commission, and the Ministry of Law and Human Rights.”

Asep stressed that the entire process was carried out objectively and transparently. He said evidence showed Roy Suryo and others had manipulated digital images of Jokowi’s diploma using non-scientific and misleading methods to support their claims.

“Digital manipulation was proven to have occurred, based on unscientific analysis designed to mislead the public,” Asep said.

Police are now coordinating with the Jakarta High Prosecutor’s Office to advance the case to trial.

Jokowi personally filed the police report in April 2025, after social media posts falsely alleged that his UGM degree was fabricated. The former president, who has faced similar claims since his first presidential run in 2014, said he chose to pursue the matter through legal channels to end years of misinformation.

Roy Suryo, 57, a fellow UGM alumnus, served as Youth and Sports Minister from 2013 to 2014 under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. He has faced several previous police complaints for defamation in unrelated cases.

Although Roy has claimed to be a digital expert and has testified in court as such, many of his online analyses have been debunked. In August 2022, he was sentenced to nine months in prison for spreading an edited meme of Jokowi’s face superimposed on a Borobudur temple statue.