Soldier jailed over Liquisa killing

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)