East Timor jails former militiamen

East Timor jails former militiamen

EAST TIMOR: Eight former pro-Jakarta militiamen have been jailed in East Timor for murders committed in mayhem surrounding a 1999 UN-backed vote that led to the country's separation from Indonesia, officials said on Monday.

A special court issued last Monday verdicts in two cases involving the eight, bringing to 63 the number of people convicted in East Timor over the violence, according to a statement by the country's serious crime unit.

Among those jailed was Mateus Lao, who was imprisoned for eight years for murdering a man who tried to flee into Indonesian-controlled West Timor. Seven others received sentences of between four and five years for an incident in which three people were murdered in the East Timorese village of Netensuan.

Indonesian troops and their local militia proxies waged a savage campaign of intimidation and revenge in the months around the August 1999 poll, which saw East Timorese vote overwhelmingly to split from Indonesia. An estimated 1,000 people were killed and whole towns razed.

United Nations-funded prosecutors have indicted 369 people, including former Indonesian armed forces chief General Wiranto, but 281 of them are in Indonesia, which refuses to hand anyone over for trial. -- AFP