Three East Timorese to testify in rights' violation trials
Three East Timorese to testify in rights' violation trials
Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
East Timor citizen Dominggos dos Santos Mouzinho arrived here on
Monday under heavy escort to testify in a hearing on Tuesday as
part of the human rights tribunal against suspected rights
violators in the 1999 East Timor atrocities.
The victim witness had been expected to arrive on Sunday but
the airplane flight was delayed.
Jakarta policemen and the human rights ad hoc prosecutors
escorted Mouzinho, who was accompanied by two staff of the United
Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) serious crime
unit and an interpreter, to the state's safe house, Attorney
General's Office spokesman Barman Zahir told a media briefing on
Monday.
Mouzinho will fly back to East Timor immediately after
Tuesday's hearing and return on Wednesday along with two other
victim witnesses: Emmilio Barreto and Joao Pereira.
The three will testify at other hearings on Thursday and will
then take the flight home on Friday.
Security has become the key issue determining the presence of
victim witnesses in the courtroom, as four of eight witnesses
summoned by the prosecutors have refused to testify against the
defendants, who are mostly military and police officers.
The victim witnesses' appearance is the most eagerly awaited
moment in Indonesia's first human rights trial because, as many
people believe, they will be the key to securing convictions, as
all of the witnesses produced thus far at the hearings have been
the subordinates or colleagues of the defendants.
The Attorney General's Office, in cooperation with the
National Police, will bear the expense of protection of the
victim witnesses, including their accommodation while in Jakarta.
The ad hoc human rights prosecutors summoned Mouzinho to
testify against five former officials of Covalima regency, some
300 kilometers south of the capital, Dili. They are believed to
have been responsible for the death of civilian refugees in the
area.
The defendants are former Covalima regent Col. Herman Sedyono,
former Suai military commander Lt. Col. Liliek Koeshadianto, his
successor Lt. Col. Sugito, former Suai military command chief of
staff Capt. Achmad Syamsudin and former Suai Police precinct
chief Lt. Col. Gatot Subiaktoro.
They are charged with involvement in the shootings of at least
27 civilians, including three Catholic priests, who took refuge
in the St. Ave Maria Church in Suai, Covalima regency, on Sept.
6, 1999, two days after the results of the independence vote in
East Timor were announced.
Mouzinho is one of the survivors of the shootings.
The dead were buried at Metamauk village in Wemasa, Belu
regency, East Nusa Tenggara, in the presence of Sugito.
Early investigations revealed that the civilians, who were
mostly women and children, were attacked by a group of pro-
Jakarta militia, Laksaur.