Global Policy Forum

Sian Powell

It was a long wait for East Timor's most important arrest warrant, but the sabotage began just hours after it was issued last week. Former Indonesian armed forces commander General Wiranto was indicted by the UN-funded Serious Crimes Unit in East Timor 16 months ago. About 15,000 pages of legal brief were filed with the Dili court in February 2003 to prove he had chain-of-command responsibility for the bloody mayhem that devastated East Timor in 1999.

The Indonesian military and its militia proxies deliberately laid waste to the tiny half-island and killed at least 1500 civilians.

Last week a US judge of the Special Panel for Serious Crimes at Dili District Court finally issued the warrant for Wiranto's arrest, causing as much consternation in Dili as it did in Jakarta. The same day, East Timor's prosecutor-general, Longuinhos Monteiro once a champion of justice, no matter the political cost publicly denounced the international staff of the Serious Crimes Unit and said the warrant was a mistake. "I regret that arrest warrant," Dr Monteiro said. "My men have opened fire without an order from me," he said.

Within hours he had sent a letter to the court saying he was troubled because more than a year had passed since the indictment was issued. "Therefore, the prosecutor-general of the republic requests the honourable special panel to kindly allow the prosecutor-general to review the filed indictment and file an amended indictment," he wrote, in what appears to be an attempt to have the warrant revoked.

And to cap off the recanting, East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao said yesterday that while his Government had no authority to annul the arrest warrant for Wiranto, it would do nothing to "carry it out". "The (East Timor) Government does not always follow or recognise SCU's decisions," Mr Gusmao said. His comments followed a meeting with Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri in Bali on Saturday. Both leaders agreed that they did not want the issue of past human rights violations to disturb their bilateral relations.

The exhortations of Mr Gus mao and his Foreign Minister, Jose Ramos Horta, on the need for good relations with East Timor's neighbour are in stark contrast to the situation before 1999, when many East Timorese leaders worked to free the state from Indonesia's yoke. Since independence, most have worked to smooth relations with their giant and hugely important neighbour. Pragmatism has triumphed.

After all, General Wiranto has a lot of clout in Indonesia. He is now one of the nation's three leading presidential candidates. The figurehead of the Golkar Party, he could conceivably soon lead the nation of 220 million people which sprawls to the east, west, and north of the tiny new nation of East Timor.

Yet under international law he should be tried for murder, persecution and forcible deportation. "Wiranto's de facto or effective control over the militia is demonstrated by evidence that the militias were formed, funded, armed and controlled by the Indonesian army with the knowledge of the accused," a summary of the legal brief says.

With only seven weeks to go before Indonesians go to the polls to elect the nation's president, General Wiranto was last week obviously troubled by news of the warrant, which could lead to an Interpol warrant and the risk of arrest in any third nation. It was a character assassination, he said. Golkar heavyweight Fahmi Idris, a minister during the New Order regime, has dampened his earlier outrage at the warrant's issue. He now says he will not talk about the events of a few months ago, but he is happy to discuss Dr Monteiro's about-face.

On the day it was issued, he said it could not be possible. "The Prime Minister of East Timor (Mari Alkatiri), when he visited here a couple of months ago, said the warrant for Wiranto would be postponed," he said.

Mr Idris also said General Wiranto's lawyer had met Dr Monteiro for reassurance. Yet a spokeswoman for Dr Alkatiri said yesterday that although she was unaware of the alleged conversation between the Prime Minister and Mr Idris, she said he had always upheld the independence of the judiciary.

International staff at the SCU in East Timor have refused to comment, but it is understood they are deeply concerned about the ramifications of Dr Monteiro's change of heart.

In the past, his public position has been that the perpetrators of atrocities in East Timor had to be brought to justice, regardless of political sensitivities. The UN Security Council's decision to extend the UN mission's mandate in East Timor means the SCU's work will continue, but perhaps without the support it once had.

"It's such a terrible shame," said one aid worker in East Timor. "The East Timorese really need to see justice done."