Soldier jailed over Liquisa killing

JAKARTA (JP): A military tribunal yesterday sentenced an Army lieutenant to four years and six months imprisonment for ordering a subordinate to kill six unarmed East Timorese suspected of supporting separatist guerrillas.

The tribunal in Denpasar, Bali, found Second Lieutenant Jeremias Kasse, an intelligence officer of the Liquisa district military command in East Timor, guilty on the three charges: disobeying an order from a superior officer; ordering someone else to commit murder; and filing a false report to a superior officer.

The panel of three judges, led by Col. M. Panjaitan, also ordered that Jeremias be expelled from the military.

The military prosecutor had earlier demanded six years and eight months imprisonment for Jeremias as well as expulsion from the military, saying that his action was a disgrace to the service.

According to a newscast of the state radio station RRI, the military judges concurred with Jeremias' assertion that the six victims had all been members of a "GPK", an abbreviation for the Indonesian words meaning "security disturbing group."

In East Timor the military uses the expression to refer to Fretilin, the armed separatist group.

According to testimony at the hearing, the six East Timorese villagers were shot, with their hands tied, near a house in a remote village in Liquisa on Jan. 12. The six had been taken prisoners by an Army patrol unit commanded by Jeremias, which had been following the trail of Fretilin members.

The man accused of carrying out Jeremias' order to "eliminate" the villagers, First Private Rusdin Maumere, is being tried separately by the same tribunal. The judges trying his case are expected to make a ruling today.

In Jeremias' case, the judges agreed with the military prosecutor's contention that the defendant, in giving the order to kill the six prisoners, had disobeyed an order from his superior, who had said that all prisoners were to be taken alive unless they were armed and opened fire first.

The judges also found against Jeremias on the charge that he had misinformed his superiors in the aftermath of the incident. Jeremias initially insisted that the six had been killed during an armed clash. For weeks the military stuck firmly to this version.

The incident became known to the public one month after it occurred.

After hearing the verdict, Jeremias, who was accompanied by two military lawyers, told the judges that he would think it over first before deciding whether or not to appeal against the sentence.

Maj. Gen. Adang Ruchiatna, the chief of the Denpasar-based Udayana Military Command whose jurisdiction covers East Timor, was present at the tribunal to hear the sentencing.

After the sentence was handed down he consoled the convict.

"No commander likes to see his men punished," he told Antara. "I love them both. They were fine soldiers," he said of Jeremias and Rusdin.

After the sentencing, Ruchiatna had a private word with the two men in a room inside the tribunal building. He declined to disclose the nature of their conversation.

"I regret that such fine soldiers committed an error. This has made me realize that there are a lot of things that I have to do for the soldiers," he said.

He conceded that he shared in the blame for what had happened. "We have to find out why they did what they did; was it because they had become `saturated' or because they were frustrated?"

Asked if the incident and the tribunal ruling would pose a problem for other soldiers serving in East Timor, Ruchiatna replied: "It's the same everywhere. It just so happens that this incident happened in East Timor."

Soldiers must obey the rules wherever they are posted and under any circumstances, he said. "It's the risk they have to take and that applies to me too." (emb)