RI confident Australia won't reexamine Balibo incident<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia doubts Australia will reopen an
\ninquiry into the deaths of five Australia-based journalists in
\nEast Timor in 1975 since the case was closed in 1996, an official
\nsays.<\/p>\n
Gaffar Fadhyl, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
\ntold The Jakarta Post by telephone here on Wednesday he was not
\nsure Australia would reexamine the case because inquiries into
\nthe journalists' deaths were supposed to have ended with the
\nSherman report.<\/p>\n
Quoting the Sherman report, he reiterated \"the five
\njournalists were killed in crossfire between irregular East
\nTimorese resistance fighters and Indonesian troops\".<\/p>\n
Tom Sherman, a former Australian government lawyer who
\nconducted an investigation into the case in 1995\/1996, reported
\nthat the two Australian, two British and one New Zealand
\ntelevision journalists were caught in crossfire and Indonesian
\ntroops had no intention of killing them.<\/p>\n
The five reportedly were killed in Balibo in the western part
\nof East Timor on Oct. 16, 1975.<\/p>\n
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer reportedly said
\nhis government would reinvestigate the journalists' deaths
\nfollowing the testimony of an East Timorese that an Indonesian
\ncommander ordered they be killed.<\/p>\n
Reuters said Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp
\n(ABC) in Canberra on Wednesday: \"I certainly think the account
\ngiven can't just be lightly dismissed. I think it has to be
\nexamined.\"<\/p>\n
Downer said he would ask Sherman, who is former head of the
\nNational Crime Authority, to review the new evidence and report
\nback to him on whether it changes his earlier findings.<\/p>\n
Olandino Guterres, who claimed to have witnessed the shooting
\nof the journalists said in an ABC television interview broadcast
\non Tuesday that Muhammad Yunus Yosfiah, now information minister
\nbut at the time a commander in the Army's Special Force
\n(Kopassus), had personally ordered the killings.<\/p>\n
Guterres, now seeking asylum in Portugal, said he was
\ntraveling with the Indonesian troops when the journalists were
\nkilled.<\/p>\n
Guterres said that, contrary to Indonesia's assertions, there
\nwas no gunfire from the East Timorese resistance fighters in the
\nincident.<\/p>\n
He said Yunus, then a captain of Kopassus, ordered his troops
\nto fire directly at four of the journalists through the windows
\nof a house in which the journalists were taking refuge. The fifth
\nwas then knifed in the back after he was ordered out of the
\nhouse.<\/p>\n
Separately, Yunus denied the allegation and said he knew
\nnothing about the incident.<\/p>\n
\"I deny the allegation. I never got information about the
\njournalists. I never met the journalists,\" Yunus said when asked
\nfor comments after speaking in a seminar here on Tuesday. (rms)<\/p>",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
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