| Subject: Indon
investigator says probe underway on Timor bodies
Indonesian investigator says probe underway on Timor bodies JAKARTA, Nov 29 (AFP) - Investigations into the brutal East Timor militia killings of 26 people have begun, with the final postmortem results to be released in a week, an Indonesian human rights investigator said Monday. The bodies of the Suai residents, believed to have died in a militia and military attack on a church in the port, were dug up from mass graves in West Timor on Thursday by Indonesian human rights investigators. They have been taken to Dili in East Timor for further examinations and burial. "What we currently have are death certificates and hopefully the final postmortem result will be released in one week," H.S. Dillon, a member of the the Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Abuses in East Timor, told AFP. Three Catholic priests among the dead have already been buried in the territory. The bodies of the 23 others, including women, children were due to be buried later Monday in the East Timor capital, Dili. But they would be re-exhumed later for further analysis, a spokesman with the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) told reporters in Dili. Dillon warned repeated exhumations "could diminish evidence," adding "most of the bodies bore knife and gunshot wounds and evidence that someone had attempted to burn them." On Sunday, UNTAET chief administrator Sergio Vieira de Mello appealed to Australian Prime Minister John Howard to send forsenic experts to the ravaged territory, saying they "need forensic capacity to look at all the bodies which may be or have been exhumed." Scores of bodies have been found or exhumed since the UN-sanctioned International Force for East Timor (Interfet) was deployed in the former Portuguese colony in September to quell the violence which erupted after the East Timorese voted to sever ties with Indonesia. But de Mello admitted with much of the territory in ruins and all the former Indonesian civil servants having fled: "It is not easy, we need pathologists, we need a morgue here in Dili." Dillon said the Indonesian commission "will work together" with the five-member UN commission of inquiry currently in Dili and scheduled to arrive in Jakarta on Sunday. He added there were other suspected sites of mass graves such as in the town of Liquisa, 35 kilometres (22 miles) west of Dili, and he urged UN investigators to start searching them. Back to November Menu Note: For those who would like to fax "the powers that be" - CallCenter V3.5.8, is a Native 32-bit Voice Telephony software application integrated with fax and data communications... and it's free of charge! Download from http://www.v3inc.com/ |