Jakarta - Indonesia's Supreme Court said Thursday that it had overturned its own verdict that awarded ex-dictator Suharto 1 trillion rupiah (93 million dollars) in damages in a lawsuit he brought against the US-based magazine Time.

A panel of three Supreme Court judges accepted that a Time story published in May 1999 that alleged Suharto had stashed billions of dollars abroad was not defamatory, the court said in a statement posted on its website.

"The story published by Time magazine was still within the boundary of the media code of ethics," a member of the panel, Hatta Ali, was quoted as saying in the statement.

The court had in 2007 overturned earlier decisions by two lower courts rejecting Suharto's lawsuit.

Time contested the ruling and filed a request for a case review.

Suharto, who died in January 2008, had sought more than 27 billion dollars in a defamation suit filed against Time over the article.

It said Time had traced about 15 billion dollars in wealth accumulated by Suharto and his six children after a four-month investigation by its correspondents in 11 countries.

The magazine also said it had documented that more than 73 billion dollars in revenues and assets passed through the Suharto family's hands during his 32-year rule, which ended in 1998.(dpa)