Rights trial defendant withdraws testimony

Rights trial defendant withdraws testimony

JAKARTA: A senior Indonesian policeman accused of human rights violations in East Timor on Wednesday told a human rights trial that previous statements he had made to investigators were false.

Former Suai Police precinct chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Gatot Subiaktoro, one of a number of military or police officers facing charges, withdrew statements linking the Suai Military District Command to marauding pro-Jakarta militia.

"I could not think (straight at the time of making the statement) ... I was in shock for being named a suspect for crimes against humanity," he told the Central Jakarta human rights ad hoc court investigating the 1999 East Timor violence.

"The statement in the dossiers was not true, your honor," he told the hearing presided over by Judge Cicut Sutiarso.

The dossiers quote him as saying that the police could not probe the attack by the pro-Jakarta Laksaur militia on proindependence supporters taking refuge in the St. Ave Maria Church in Suai town on Sept. 6, 1999, because of an emotional relationship between Laksaur and the military command.

Twenty-seven civilians, including three Catholic priests, were killed in the attack.

The dossiers also recorded his conversation with the late Olivio Moruk, the Laksaur leader, which justified the existence of the armed militia.

Gatot, who testified that he did not have enough power to prevent the attack, claimed that he had never said that he endorsed the presence of the armed group. --JP