By Joanna Jolly
Associated PressJanuary 25, 2001
In the first successful prosecution for the destruction of East Timor in 1999, an international court sentenced a pro-Indonesian militiaman to 12 years in prison for murder.
Joao Fernandes, a member of the Merah Putih (Red and White) militia gang, was found guilty of killing a pro-independence activist in the town of Maliana, close to the border with Indonesian-held West Timor, on Sept. 8, 1999.
``This judgment should be enforced immediately,'' said presiding judge Luca Ferrero. The Italian justice presided over a three-man panel of judges at the Dili District Court.
Hundreds of people died and most of East Timor was destroyed when the Indonesian army and its local auxiliaries went on a rampage after voters decided to break away from Indonesia in a U.N.-sponsored independence referendum in Aug. 1999. Some 250,000 East Timorese were forced from their homes and many fled to West Timor. Tens of thousands are still waiting for repatriation to East Timor. Most militiamen also fled with the retreating Indonesian troops.
The United Nations is administering East Timor during its transition to full independence, expected next year.
About 70 other militiamen implicated in the violence are in detention in East Timor waiting for their trials to start.
Fernandes, 22, testified during his trial that Indonesian army officers had given him a samurai sword and ordered him to kill independence supporters. He pleaded guilty to stabbing village chief Domingos Pereira who had been hiding in the Maliana police station. More than 40 people were killed in the massacre, according to U.N. investigators.
Outside the courtroom, members of the victim's family said they were not satisfied with the sentence. ``We wanted him to get the maximum 28 years because of how much we have suffered,'' said Isabella Pereira, who said she had witnessed the kidnapping of her father before his death.
American prosecutor Brenda Sue Thornton, one of several foreign lawyers in the newly established court, said the sentence corresponded to those handed down by war crimes tribunals in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. ``The sentence reflected the fact that the defendant has agreed to cooperate on other cases in the future,'' she said.
Indonesia promised to bring to justice militiamen and others implicated in the violence who are now on its soil. But of 23 suspects whom they named for the 1999 incidents, including several senior army officers, none have been charged.
Notorious militia leader Eurico Guterres is standing trial on unrelated weapons charges from West Timor last year. And six militiamen are on trial in Jakarta in the deaths of three U.N. aid workers in West Timor last September
