Suspects in East Timor case to be questioned

Suspects in East Timor case to be questioned

JAKARTA (JP): The 19 suspects accused of human rights
violations during last year's violence in East Timor are expected
to face the first round of questioning next week.

Attorney General's Office spokesman Yushar Yahya said a
summons will be sent on Tuesday. This should give them enough
time to come to Jakarta to face questioning by the joint team set
up by the Office to investigate the case, Yushar added.

"Many suspects currently reside far away from Jakarta. The
questioning is expected to be held on Monday, with all the 19
suspects being questioned by the 64-member team on the same day,"
Yushar told journalists at his office.

The 19 suspects consisting of military officers, government
officials and civilians, were deemed responsible for five
specific incidents before and after the Aug. 30 ballot last year,
which is the time frame being focused on by the Attorney
General's Office.

Conspicuously missing, however, were former Indonesia Military
chief Gen. (ret) Wiranto, former intelligence chief Maj. Gen.
Zacky Anwar Makarim and Jakarta-backed militia leader Eurico
Guterres who were all implicated in an earlier rights inquiry
report.

Meanwhile, later on Monday, a gathering of organizations which
supported wide-ranging regional autonomy in East Timor urged
investigators to also question parties responsible for
safeguarding and guaranteeing security during the United Nations
(UN)-sponsored direct ballot.

Uni Timor Aswain chief Domingos Soares said at least three
parties should be also be accountable for occurrences during the
campaign and after the ballot, namely the National Commission on
Human Rights (Komnas HAM) members in the Commission for Peace and
Stability (KPS), the National Police and the UN Mission in East
Timor (UNAMET).

"If there were gun fights, Komnas HAM members should also be
blamed for not disarming the people before the ballot. And to be
fair, we have to admit that both the pro-integration and pro-
independence supporters are implicated in the terror and
violence," Soares told The Jakarta Post.

Soares also demanded that the government probe incidents which
erupted soon after Portugal left the territory in 1975 and led to
a civil war.

"The clashes made the region insecure which then led to the
ballot. So those incidents should be included in the probe to get
a fair solution in the human rights abuse case," he added.

However, Soares said, the government is on the right track
with its determination to solve the case according to the law and
without any help from the international community.

"If we use an international tribunal for the case, it means we
have shifted a legal problem to a political one. And that's a bad
precedence," he said.

Commenting on the ballot which voted overwhelmingly to reject
the offer of wide-ranging autonomy within Indonesia, Soares still
maintained that there was evidence that the results had been
engineered.

Soares said his group would initiate an internal meeting of
Timorese, called Timorese Biti Bot (huge mat) for a
reconciliation and a discussion to find the best solution of
ending the conflict among themselves.

"We don't need any sponsor for the meeting, even from the
international community. We will use our own customs and
traditions to solve the problems." (bby)