Also: UN administrator says Indonesian war crimes trial process in limbo

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Timor leaders warn Jakarta over trials

JAKARTA, Feb 23 (AFP) - East Timorese leaders told Indonesian parliamentary heads Friday that unless Jakarta moves soon to try those accused of committing crimes in East Timor, an international war crimes tribunal will be unavoidable.

"If Indonesia delivers justice it will be good for everyone," East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta told journalists after meeting upper house speaker Amien Rais.

"However, if it fails there is no way the (UN) Security Council itself can escape its responsibility to hold an international war crimes tribunal," he said on the second of a three-day visit.

Ramos Horta was speaking after he and the territory's chief UN administrator Sergio Viera de Mello met with Rais and lower house speaker Akbar Tanjung, along with members of the parliament's foreign affairs committee.

De Mello said Thursday that the process to try 22 people accused by Indonesian prosecutors of involvement in the violence surrounding the 1999 ballot violence was "in legal limbo."

UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has warned that if Jakarta does not try the suspects, and justice is not seen to be done, an international tribunal could be convened.

UN investigators say they have evidence that at least 600 East Timorese were killed by the militia, when they went on a rampage of arson, burning and looting to avenge the quit-Indonesia vote.

At Friday's meeting Rais "reiterated his preference for a domestic court to hold the trials," Horta said.

De Mello and Horta expressed their support for the setting up of ad hoc tribunals to hear East Timor crimes, coming up for approval by the parliament in the coming weeks.

"If that takes place it will be a major step forward for Indonesia's credibility," Horta said.

"We don't want a war crimes tribunal (just) for the sake of it."

The change of status of one of the most notorious suspects named by Indonesian prosecutors, militia leader Eurico Guterres, -- from prison into house arrest -- while still on trial in Jakarta on charges unrelated to the Timor violence, boded poorly, Horta said.

"It doesn't help much in the credibility of the whole Indonesian legal system but the trial is continuing," he said.

"Eurico Guterres is suspected of many more serious crimes," he said referring to the 1999 violence.

bc/kw/ben AFP

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UN administrator says Indonesian war crimes trial process in limbo

JAKARTA, Feb 22 (AFP) - The head of the UN administration in East Timor Thursday said he hoped Indonesia would soon convene ad hoc human rights tribunals to try those accused in the bloody post-ballot violence in the territory.

"Our hope is that the courts will materialize soon, because those cases need to be brought to a tribunal court as soon as possible," Sergio Vieira de Mello said after a meeting in Jakarta with Indonesian Attorney General Marzuki Darusman.

"We are now in some kind of legal limbo, and this limbo cannot last indefinitely," de Mello added.

He said Darsuman had briefed him and East Timor's Foreign Minister, Nobel Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, on the process that would lead to the establishment of the ad hoc courts, but gave no time frame.

De Mello also said that Darusman had agree to the United Nations sending a team of investigators "to carry out the questioning of Eurico here in Jakarta."

He was referring to the former head of the notorious Aitarak (Thorn) militia, Eurico Guterres, who is currently standing trial in Jakarta for offences unrelated to the September 1999 East Timor violence.

The UN wants to question Guterres and 21 other suspects named by Darusman's office in five documented cases of gross human rights violations in the violence wreaked by Indonesian militiary-raised and trained militia folowing the territory's vote for independence.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has warned that if Jakarta does not try the 22, and justice is not seen to be done, an international tribunal could be convened.

UN investigators say they have evidence that at least 600 East Timorese were killed by the militia, when they went on a rampage of arson, burning and looting to avenge the quit-Indonesia vote.

De Mello told journalists he had also brought up the case of the murder of Leonard Manning, a UN peacekeeper from New Zealand.

"I also asked the Attorney General about the arrest of one suspect in the (July, 2000) murder case of Private Manning, who is now under arrest," he said.

"We want to question him. We have also requested for the arrest of five other suspects, also for the case of Private Manning."

Indonesian authorities said last month that they would not allow the man they arrested in the Manning case, Yakobus Bere, 29, to be tried outside the country.

"According to Indonesian law, we cannot extradite our nationals. That is what our extradition law says," police chief for East Nusa Tenggara province, Made Mangku Pastika, said last month.

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