State prosecutors to visit West and East Timor
State prosecutors to visit West and East Timor
JAKARTA (JP): A team of state prosecutors investigating last
year's violence in East Timor will visit the territory and the
neighboring Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara sometime in
the middle of this month, Attorney General Marzuki Darusman said
on Sunday.
"The visit will probably take place in mid-May or after May 15
and the team will go to Kupang and Atambua first," Marzuki told
The Jakarta Post by phone.
Some 250,000 people were evacuated to East Nusa Tenggara
following the violence that erupted after an overwhelming vote
for independence in East Timor in August.
Over 100,000 East Timorese refugees are still seeking shelter
in the province and harassment from prointegration militias is
reportedly hampering efforts to return them to their home soil.
Marzuki said that during the visit, the team would "verify
some information and reports". He did not elaborate, but said
"there is no difficulty whatsoever" with the United Nations
Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) with regard to
the team's planned visit to the former Indonesian province.
Marzuki was referring to a 64-member team of investigators,
which is led by Deputy Attorney General for General Crimes M.
Rahman.
The team was set up last month to follow up on the findings of
the Commission of Inquiry into Human Rights Violations (KPP HAM)
in East Timor
KPP HAM implicated earlier this year former Indonesian
Military Gen. (ret) Wiranto and 32 other military and civilian
officers in the East Timor violence.
Wiranto, who was suspended as coordinating minister for
political affairs and security by President Abdurrahman Wahid
pending the results of the investigation, has denied any
wrongdoing.
The Attorney General's Office will have three months from
April to report its findings, with the possibility of further
three-month extensions.
Initially the investigation will focus on five cases which
will be considered for prosecution.
They are: an April 17 attack on proindependence leader Manuel
Carrascalao's house in Dili in which at least 12 people died; the
Sept. 6 attack at the home of Dili Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes
Belo; a massacre of refugees in a church in Liquica in April; a
massacre in a church in Suai in September where at least 26
people died; and the killing of Financial Times correspondent
Sander Thoenes in the East Dili area of Becora on Sept. 21.
Meanwhile, chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights
(Komnas HAM) Djoko Soegianto called on Saturday for the
establishment of an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute those who were
allegedly involved in the East Timor violence.
Human rights activists have said that an ad hoc tribunal for
East Timor should be established as what happened in the
territory last year were "political crimes" and not "ordinary
crimes".
They feared that if the prosecutors used an approach similar
to that of a criminal investigation, senior officers who were not
"directly on the ground" would not be implicated and would remain
free of prosecution.
"Morally, Wiranto is guilty. But legally, I can prove his
innocence to any law expert," noted lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution
said on Saturday.
Nasution, who is leading a team of lawyers representing
Wiranto and other military generals implicated in the violence,
said that under Indonesian law, collective responsibility is not
known and therefore his client was not responsible for what
happened on the ground. (byg/dja)