Balibo killings were a blunder, not murder

By Stephen Spencer, Diplomatic Correspondent

CANBERRA, Feb 16 AAP - Indonesian special forces troops were responsible for the deaths of five Australian-based newsmen in East Timor in 1975, but the killings were more likely to have been a blunder rather than murder, a reopened inquiry today found.

Former National Crime Authority chairman Tom Sherman found the troops responsible for the killings were led by Yunos Yosfiah, now Indonesia's information minister.

But his failure to change his original finding that Gary Cunningham, Brian Peters, Malcolm Rennie, Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart died in battle again failed to satisfy families of the newsmen.

Mr Sherman was asked by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to reopen his 1996 inquiry, after new eyewitnesses claimed at least some of the five had been murdered by Indonesian troops.

They included Olandino Guterres and a man codenamed C5, East Timorese members of the Indonesian-led force known as SUSI responsible for the attack, and Terrado, a Fretilin resistance fighter.

But Mr Sherman said there were major discrepancies between their accounts. "Guterres says that four were killed in the front room of the house at 2 o'clock and one was killed towards the rear of that house. C5 says two were killed in the house at 8 o'clock and he later saw the bodies of three behind the house at 2 o'clock. Terrado saw three being killed out in the open somewhere in the centre of Balibo," Mr Sherman said.

He said the three couldn't even agree on whether the five were killed with knives or guns.

Mr Sherman said attempts were made to cover up the killings by dressing the newsmen in combat uniforms, and then burning the bodies.

But he says this was done not because the five were murdered, but to cover up "a monumental blunder" and the embarrassment the killings would cause the Indonesian military "and perhaps more importantly, its effect on Australian/Indonesian bilateral relations".

Mr Shackleton's widow Shirley said she was not surprised by the findings. "This is not a judicial inquiry, he (Sherman) did not have the power to subpoena witnesses and so I didn't expect anything," she told AAP. "This is why you need a full judicial inquiry so they (the witnesses) would have to do it under oath, and if it was bona fide

But she welcomed Mr Sherman's decision to strengthen his original findings to pin the blame for the deaths on Indonesian special forces under the command of Yunos Yosfiah.

"As to Yunos Yosfiah, I believe there is sufficient evidence to link him to the command of SUSI and therefore to the command of the group of attackers to have killed the journalists," the report found.

But he was not prepared to back Guterres' claims that Yosfiah had ordered the killing of the journalists.

Mr Downer told parliament the government had been thoroughly transparent on the Balibo killings, but was disappointed Indonesia had again refused to co-operate with the inquiry.

"The government asked at the highest levels of the Indonesian government that Mr Sherman be allowed to visit Indonesia," Mr Downer told parliament. "The Indonesian government did not agree to this request and we cannot compel it to do so."

But Mr Downer said he had written to his Indonesian counterpart Ali Alatas asking him to pursue additional information on the killings. Mr Downer announced the government would support a full parliamentary inquiry into the killings proposed by opposition foreign affairs spokesman Laurie Brereton.

Mr Brereton expressed dissatisfaction with Mr Sherman's latest report and urged Mr Downer to demand answers from Indonesia.

"Some 23 years on, today's report has not taken us very far in understanding what happened at Balibo," he said.

Greens Senator Bob Brown rejected the report out of hand, and said Australia must force Indonesia to support an open and independent inquiry.

"Nothing short of that is either justice or will bring some feeling of resolution to the relatives of those people who died at Balibo."

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