Global Policy Forum

By John Aglionby

Indonesia's human rights tribunal for East Timor continued its run of astonishing verdicts yesterday by acquitting the police chief and five mid-ranking officers of some of the worst crimes against humanity committed during the violence in 1999.

The previous day it convicted the civilian governor of the territory at the time, Abilio Soares, of human rights abuses but jailed him for only three years, provoking international condemnation of the specially created tribunal.

The United Nations has joined numerous observers in describing the process as extremely flawed, although it has not gone as far as human rights organisations such as Amnesty International which are demanding the global body take action.

After consulting the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, the human rights commissioner, Mary Robinson, said in a long statement that the credibility and integrity of the trials was "in jeopardy". Groups monitoring the trials of 18 army and police officers, civilian officials and militia leaders say the tribunal has become so ridiculous that the individual verdicts are virtually meaningless.

This was highlighted yesterday by the acquittal of Briga dier Timbul Silaen, the police chief during the carnage which surrounded the UN-sponsored referendum in which the territory vote overwhelmingly to end 24 years of Indonesian occupation. To cheers and tears from the packed public gallery, the presiding judge, Andi Samsan Nganro, said: "The defendant cannot be proven legally . . . guilty of gross human rights violations." He was accused of failing to prevent his subordinates taking part in the violence in which about 1,000 people died, 80% of the territory was destroyed, and 250,000 people were forcibly evacuated to Indonesia.

The head of the Jakarta office of the International Crisis Group, Sidney Jones, said the court's decision was correct. "There's no way they could have convicted Timbul on the evidence presented, even though everyone knows the reality of what went on," she said.

A UN-sanctioned international inquiry in 2000 concluded that the murders, forcible evacuation and destruction were mostly part of a systematic campaign organised and run by the Indonesian security forces and their locally recruited militias.

The prosecutors have chosen not to use the evidence gathered by this and two other inquiry teams, including one by Indonesia's own human rights commission. Mrs Robinson is among those questioning these omissions.

Hours after Brig Silaen's acquittal, a different panel of judges cleared five army and police colonels and majors of being involved in a militia massacre of at least 27 people, including three priests, in the town of Suai, shortly after the referendum. One of those acquitted was a direct subordinate of Brig Soares.

The head of the UN's mission in East Timor in 1999, Ian Martin, said yesterday that the Suai acquittals showed that the tribunals were a complete failure. "That was the worst individual massacre in East Timor in 1999," he said. "If you were going to get convictions of Indonesian military officers systematically acting with the militias to murder East Timorese, that was the case par excellence. "The real point is that this is such a massively discredited process the individual verdicts are almost irrelevant." He said he was willing to give evidence but had not been asked.

Amnesty International and East Timor's Judicial System Monitoring Programme, which has followed each day of the trials, echoed Mr Martin's views in a joint statement released yesterday. They said the trials "have not been performed in accordance with international standards, and have delivered neither truth nor justice".

Among the "succession of serious procedural and other failures" noted by the two organisations were the weak and inaccurate indictments, inadequate protection for East Timorese witnesses, and the prosecutors' decision to ignore "key evidence regarding the direct involvement of the security forces in committing serious crimes".

But most western governments are saying it is too early to judge the tribunal. A British Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: "The important thing is that the East Timorese government and people have faith in the process."

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