February 9, 2000
United Nations, - Indonesia has arrested a notorious East Timor gang leader, suspected of being involved in massacres, looting and attacks against Australian soldiers, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
The leader of a pro-Jakarta militia, Moko Soares, was picked up in Indonesian West Timor on Monday after weeks of discussions among authorities there, U.N. officials and General Peter Cosgrove, head of the Australia-led international force in the territory. U.N. spokeswoman, Marie Okabe, said Soares, arrested at his home near the Bobometo border crossing, was being charged with illegal possession and sale of weapons, having been found with several rifles and other ammunition on him. The United Nations would like to have him extradited to East Timor for his part in the violence militias initiated following an Aug. 30 vote for independence from Jakarta but it is not certain if Indonesia will do that.
Soares, interviewed recently by a Portuguese television crew, was said to be involved in atrocities in the East Timorese enclave of Oecussi, where U.N. investigators say some 45 people were massacred in 1999. The victims are believed to have been hacked to death or shot by the militiamen, aided by Indonesian police and soldiers, during the 1999 mayhem in the territory, a former Portuguese colony Jakarta invaded in 1975.
Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. administrator in East Timor until the territory becomes independent, told the Security Council last week that "thugs" arrested in the eastern part of the island recently had been interviewed about Soares. Soares was reported to have ordered them to kill someone associated with the United Nations to bolster their standing with Indonesian soldiers, Vieira de Mello said. The militia, during the September 1999 turmoil, also herded hundreds of thousands of East Timorese over the border to West Timor where more than 100,000 are still in gang-controlled refugee camps, some of which Secretary-General Kofi Annan will visit next week.
The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR said violence had increased against refugees, aid workers and journalists in West Timor, near the capital of Kupang last week. The worst is one camp in Tuapukan, where 20,000 refugees are captive. Annan, during his current trip to Asia, will have the task of telling officials in Jakarta to control the militia while at the same time careful not to exacerbate ties between the President Abdurrahman Wahid and a restive military.
