Indonesia's Supreme Court today ordered Time magazine to to pay $106 million in damages to former Indonesian President Suharto after the magazine alleged more than eight years ago that the deposed dictator's family had amassed some $73 billion "in revenues and assets" during his period in power.

That's worrying news for journalists covering the fortunes of fallen despots the world over. The fortunes of the Suharto case exactly mirrored the standing in Indonesia of the former ruler himself: Suharto filed a defamation suit against the magazine immediately after the publication of the original piece in 1999, seeking more than $27 billion in damages, only to find it rejected by Jakarta's District Court in 2000 and then the Appeal Court in 2001. But this year, as Suharto's own legacy has been slowly rehabilitated, Indonesia's highest court overturned the decision of the two lower courts and ruled that the Time article "defamed" the former ruler.

Who's next? Could a future Serbian court one day rule that investigations into the Milosevic family fortune are defamatory? Or a Russian court rule that probes into the Yeltsin - or even Putin - family wealth are off-limits? As witnessed by the passionate political and legal debates surrounding the possible extradition of former Chilean ruler Augusto Pinochet before his death last December, the legacy of dictators is often a point of passionate argument in the countries they once ruled. Should the international journalists who investigate their alleged wrongdoings be made to pay for being on the wrong side of the debate?