Int'l tribunal looms as Jakarta stalls on E. Timor probe Sugianto Tandra

JAKARTA, Oct. 17 Kyodo

Attorney General's Office has failed to meet the Tuesday deadline to wrap up its probe into last year's atrocities in East Timor, giving human rights campaigners the chance to call for an international tribunal to try those allegedly involved.

Prosecutor Antasari Azhar, the office's media relations official, said investigators are still expected to question six more suspects, all East Timorese militia men. But he said the office would in any case announce the results of its probe next week.

Prosecutors have named 23 suspects, including two army generals and one police general, in the atrocities that took place from April to September last year.

East Timor descended into an orgy of killing, rape and arson by pro-Jakarta militias and Indonesian soldiers and police who backed them after an overwhelming majority of its people voted for independence in a U.N.-backed referendum on Aug. 30 last year.

As of Tuesday, Indonesia's former army chief Gen. Wiranto has not been named a suspect, although an independent probe recommended he be named as the highest-ranking official most responsible for last year's gross human rights violations in East Timor.

With the expiry of the deadline, Asmara Nababan, secretary general of Indonesia's independent National Commission on Human Rights, told Kyodo News the way is now clear for an international tribunal to be set up.

He said there have been 'worrying indications' that Indonesia is dragging its feet in dealing with the probe into the atrocities.

Besides the sluggishness of the Attorney General's Office, Nababan said the House of Representatives which is deliberating a bill on a Human Rights Tribunal has also been slow in passing it.

Under last year's emergency regulations in lieu of a law on a human rights tribunal -- on which the current East Timor probe is based -- the Attorney General's Office has six months to wrap up its probe.

The probe started on April 18, but the office only came up with an initial list of 19 suspects in September and another four in early October.

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