E Timor prime minister calls for int'l tribunal to try RI officers
E Timor prime minister calls for int'l tribunal to try RI officers
Associated Press, Dili, East Timor
East Timor prime minister on Friday called for the establishment
of an international tribunal in a neutral country to try
Indonesian military officers for the bloodshed that swept the
country when it voted to break from Jakarta in 1999.
Mari Alkatiri also criticized the trials of 18 senior
Indonesian officials in Jakarta over their alleged roles in the
violence, which left up to 2,000 people dead.
"I am not satisfied (with the Jakarta trials)," he told
reporters after meeting with President Xanana Gusmao. "They are
like a piece of theater."
The Jakarta trials, which followed intense international
pressure on Indonesia to prosecute those responsible, have so far
acquitted 12 suspects and convicted five, who got sentences from
three to 10 years.
Alkatiri's comments will likely cheer local and foreign rights
activists, who have also criticized the Jakarta trials and called
on Gusmao to push for the prosecution of the Indonesian officials
in an international war crimes tribunal.
Alkatiri said there was "an obligation to establish an
international tribunal in a neutral country to punish and bring
to justice the perpetrators." He did not elaborate.
Alkatiri said he and several ministers were traveling to
Jakarta on June 10 and would discuss the issue of an
international tribunal with President Megawati Soekarnoputri.
Indonesian troops and their militia proxies destroyed much of
East Timor and killed up to 2,000 people before and after a U.N.-
sponsored independence referendum in 1999.
Gusmao has said that maintaining ties with its giant neighbor
and former occupying power are more important than pursing
justice for those accused in the violence, which only stopped
when international peacekeeping troops arrived in East Timor.
Prosecutors in the capital Dili are pursuing their own war
crimes trials. They have indicted nearly 250 people, including
the former chief of the Indonesian military, Gen. Wiranto. Thirty
people - mostly former militiamen - have been convicted.
Indonesia has said it will not send any officers to Dili to
stand trial. It is unlikely to agree to cooperate with an
international tribunal unless foreign governments and the United
Nations put intense pressure on it to do so.
Jakarta convened the trials in Jakarta to head off an
international drive to set up a U.N. war crimes trial for East
Timor akin to those for ex-Yugoslavia and Rwanda.