Eurico seeks police protection

Eurico seeks police protection

JAKARTA (JP): Insecure with Attorney General Marzuki
Darusman's statement that he be sent back to East Timor for
prosecution, pro-Indonesia militia leader Eurico Guterres
revealed on Thursday that he had sought police protection.

"When I was arrested, Marzuki told me that I was going to be
sent back to East Timor," Eurico told reporters from his safe
house, located in a complex which also houses top Jakarta Police
officers.

The complex is situated inside the Jakarta Police
Headquarters.

Eurico was transferred from the detention center at the
National Police Headquarters to the safe house on Saturday after
he was arrested on Oct. 4 for his alleged role in ordering his
followers to repossess arms after initially handing them over to
the authorities on Sept. 24.

Eurico was also named a suspect by the Attorney General's
Office in the alleged human rights abuses in East Timor last
year.

The South Jakarta District Court ordered the police on Monday
to release Eurico, saying that he had been wrongfully arrested.

Eurico said that he considered Marzuki's plan to send him back
to East Timor as a threat since Australia and the United States
had ordered his arrest and murder in East Timor.

"Why do they (the U.S. and Australia) have this thing against
me. Such a stance will not solve the problems in East Timor," he
said.

Marzuki Darusman has rejected a request filed by the United
Nations Transitional Administration (UNTAET) that Eurico be
handed over for trial in the East Timor capital of Dili, which
was based on a memorandum of understanding signed by the
Indonesian government and UNTAET in April.

Marzuki, instead, has allowed UNTAET officials to question
Eurico here.

The country's top figures including Speaker to the People's
Consultative Assembly Amien Rais and Speaker to the House of
Representatives Akbar Tandjung urged the government not to allow
Eurico's extradition since he had chosen to remain an Indonesian
citizen.

Eurico said that he was willing to be stationed anywhere, as
long as it was still in Indonesia, after his release which he
believed would occur in two or three days.

"I certainly would like to go back to Kupang (East Nusa
Tenggara) because that's where my wife and kid live," Eurico
said.

Eurico said that he did not want to go back to East Timor
because UNTAET had been unfair to him.

"They act as if the human rights violation in East Timor only
occurred after the ballot last year," Eurico said, adding that
the pro-independence group Conselho National Resistancia Timorese
(CNRT) and its armed wing Falintil had also murdered some pro-
Indonesia figures.

Eurico also handed out two pages of papers to reporters which
contained 13 names of pro-Indonesia figures who had been murdered
by CNRT/Falintil between Aug. 1997 and Aug. 1999.

The pro-integrationists lost the UN-sponsored ballot to pro-
independence supporters in August last year. (jaw)