Global Policy Forum

Evelyn Rusli

An Indonesian appeals court announced on Friday that it had overturned the convictions of four security officers for crimes against humanity during the East Timor massacres in 1999. The decision means that all police and military officials indicted by the ad hoc Indonesian human rights tribunal on East Timor have been released. Prosecutors may appeal to the Supreme Court.

Indonesian human rights organizations said the rulings represented a travesty of justice, but the Indonesian military welcomed the decision. Colonel Ahmad Yani Basuki, a spokesman for Indonesia's military, said, "We believe the process was handled professionally." Hendardi, a leading Indonesian human rights advocates, called the verdicts "theater." "Now the United Nations can ask to convene an international tribunal," he said, like those created for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Residents of East Timor voted in an UN-sponsored referendum in August 1999 to approve independence from Indonesia. Before the referendum, the Indonesian Army and the militias it had trained terrorized supporters of independence. After the vote, the militias and their military sponsors initiated violence that killed more than 1,500 people before international peacekeepers arrived. The tribunal was set up to try those responsible for the violence, but it appeared that the Indonesian government never took it seriously, according to Western diplomats.

Indonesia has tried 18 suspects and acquitted 16. Only the two civilians who were prosecuted, a notorious militia commander, Eurico Guterres, and East Timor's former governor, Abilio Jose Soares, are serving sentences. The appeals court reduced the prison sentence of Guterres from 10 years to 5. Guterres, a leader of paramilitary gangs recruited by the Indonesian Army to suppress East Timor's independent movement, was convicted in 2002. An appeals court clerk, Stephanus Agung Pramono, said the rulings were handed down two weeks ago and released on Friday. The security officers acquitted include Major General Adam Damiri, the highest-ranking military official to face trial for crimes against humanity in East Timor. He was sentenced to three years by the Indonesian tribunal in 2002. But in a surprising move in June 2003, the prosecutor requested the judge to absolve Damiri because of insufficient evidence. The appeals court also overturned the convictions of Brigadier General M. Noer Muis, Lieutenant Colonel Sujarwo and Colonel Hulman Goeltom. The security officials' sentences were less than half the 10-year minimum term prescribed by the tribunal's statutes. The officers had been free pending appeal.

As the ad hoc tribunal proceeded, the United States called on Indonesia to hold military officials responsible for the East Timor attacks in the past. But now the Bush administration is eager to strengthen ties with the Indonesian military for the fight against terror.