Soldiers to be tried over Liquisa
Soldiers to be tried over Liquisa
JAKARTA (JP): Two soldiers will be court-martialled for their role in the Jan. 12 killing of six people in Liquisa, East Timor, Army Chief of Staff Gen. R. Hartono announced yesterday.
"The two soldiers of the Liquisa military district will be court-martialled on criminal charges," Hartono said, citing the findings of an Officers' Honor Council's investigation into the Liquisa affair.
The military will also take administrative and disciplinary measures against other officers and soldiers involved in the incident, Hartono said. He declined to reveal, however, how many of those would face disciplinary, as opposed to merely administrative action.
Hartono declined to name the two soldiers to be court- martialled, nor would he say what the charges were, affirming only that the tribunal which is to try their cases upholds the principle of the presumption of innocence.
He said that Operation Parkit, which involved a team of 30 soldiers, had deviated from standard procedures when the soldiers killed six East Timorese after seeing a fellow-soldier badly wounded during a clash.
"The two (officers) will go on trial soon," Hartono told a packed press conference. Hartono maintained that the six Timorese who were killed had been rebels and rebel sympathizers; not civilians, as some have claimed.
The council was established to assess the results of two prior investigations into the controversial incident: one by the National Commission on Human Rights and another by the Armed Forces.
Hartono said that, on the basis of documentary research, interviews, field reconstructions and interrogations, the two soldiers appeared to be the most responsible for the death of the six people.
"Whoever is responsible for the killings will be punished," he said, adding that the punishment might be either administrative or disciplinary.
He said the investigation findings would be delivered to the Udayana Military Police in Bali today and dossiers would subsequently be filed with the local military court.
Hartono declined to mention even the ranks of the two soldiers to be court-martialled. "Both of them are members of the Parkit mobile patrol team," he said.
The Parkit patrol team was specially established in response to the increasing rebel activity in the Liquisa regency. The Parkit operation was led by First Lt. Jermias Kasse.
Hartono said the investigation had revealed that the six victims had been members of an East Timor rebel group led by Antoni Alves.
"Two of them, Ozario Soares and Americo Aroujo, were armed rebels, while Jose Nunes, Victor, Abel Nunes, and Augusto Pinto were rebel supporters," he said.
"Jermias has admitted that he gave the instruction for the shootings to be carried out," Hartono said.
He said the shootings had resulted from the Parkit team's fatigued psychological condition after a difficult three-day operation.
The team was disappointed because they had failed to capture Antoni Alves and they were outraged because one of their number, Custodio Bareto, had been severely wounded in a skirmish, Hartono said.
Similar
The findings of the council's investigations were similar to those of the Armed Forces investigation.
The Armed Forces said in February that some soldiers had made a mistake when they killed six people who were members of an East Timorese rebel group.
Hartono yesterday gave a similar chronology of events leading up to the incident, based on the investigation of a fact-finding team led by Brig. Gen. Sumarna T. of the Armed Forces Inspectorate-General.
He said that for several months prior to the incident the security team in Liquisa had been observing the movements, into and out of the regency, of several long-haired people whom it believed to be separatists.
On Jan. 8, the security team received a tip about the presence of 12 armed separatists. On Jan. 9, the team received a report that some 45 members of an anti-integration organization were resting at the house of the head of Gariana village .
On the evening of Jan. 11, there was an armed clash in Gariana. Following this contact, the patrol team confiscated several documents, which later led troops to arrest four local people who were "strongly suspected" of being active members of a clandestine movement.
These four men were then used to lead the patrol team to the rebels' hideouts.
On Jan. 12 the security team, guided by the four men, raided four places, but the first three turned out to be empty.
On the fourth raid, in a village called Fabo, about seven kilometers from Gariana, there was another armed contact, in which the six East Timorese were killed. (imn)