Six suspects in West Timor UN killings flown to Jakarta for trial

JAKARTA, Nov 28 (AFP) - Indonesian provincial authorities on Tuesday flew six East Timorese suspected of slaughtering three UN workers in West Timor in September to Jakarta for trial.

The suspects, flown on a commercial flight from Kupang in West Timor, were accompanied by personnel from the East Nusatenggara provincial police and prosecutors' office, the Antara news agency said.

It quoted province spokesman, Nani Kosapilawan, as saying the six would be tried in the North Jakarta district court, but he did not give a date.

The six were identified as Sinto Perreira, Seraphim Ximenes, Joao Martins, Julius Naesama, Jose Fransisco and Joao Alves da Cruz.

Kosapilawan said two cases would be heard involving three defendants each, but he did not elaborate further.

Indonesian officials have said the trial of the suspects, all former members of the pro-Indonesian militia in East Timor, would be held in Jakarta for security reasons.

Hundreds of machete-wielding pro-Indonesia militiamen attacked the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Atambua, hacking to death a US citizen, a Croatian and an Ethiopian.

The grisly killings triggered the flight of some 400 local and foreign aid workers who were helping to feed and relocate East Timorese refugees in West Timor.

A resolution by the UN Security Council demanded the militias be disarmed and disbanded. The resolution also called for the killers to be brought to justice.

West Timor is sheltering some 130,000 refugees out of some 250,000 East Timorese who fled their homes in the violence that followed the pro independence UN held ballot held in August last year.

More than 70,000 East Timorese refugee have since returned home.

The militias, who went into a frenzy of killing and destruction following the pro-independence ballot, fled to West Timor with the arrival of the UN-sanctioned multinational peacekeeping force.

Militias now control the refugee camps, UN officials, rights and humanitarian activists have said.

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