Ad hoc tribunal start in October?

JAKARTA (JP): The chief of the justices team preparing the establishment of an ad hoc human rights tribunal, Benjamin Mangkoedilaga, expects that they could start the court hearings in October this year.

Correcting his previous announcement that the trials would start in September, Benjamin said on Wednesday they would only open the trials in October "because the team had yet to finish recruitment of noncareer judges."

The government has revised the decree on ad hoc tribunals to try human rights violations in East Timor in April and September of 1999 and the rights abuses that occurred during the Tanjung Priok shootings in September 1984.

"If you ask when we can start to try the cases, I would say that we could start them tomorrow. But trying such cases needs further requirements if we really want to properly handle the cases," Benjamin told The Jakarta Post at his office.

He said such requirements included the objective recruitment of noncareer judges who would be selected from among experts and professionals dealing with legal matters.

He said further that between 60 and 80 noncareer and career judges were needed to run the ad hoc tribunals. "But so far, the team has succeeded only in recruiting 40 career judges and no noncareer judges," he said, adding that they found it hard to recruit noncareer judges.

Ideally, he said, each human rights violation case would be tried by five judges comprising two career-judges and three noncareer judges.

So far, the Attorney General's Office has prepared 12 dossiers on 18 suspects involved in four incidents of alleged rights abuses that occurred before and after the East Timor self- determination ballot on Aug. 30, 1999. The office is still working on the investigation of the Tanjung Priok incident. (tso)