| Subject: Timor
rights abuse investigators to meet with military chief
Timor rights abuse investigators to meet with military chief JAKARTA, Nov 29 (AFP) - Indonesian investigators will meet with the armed forces chief to discuss what legal steps can be taken against those implicated in a wave of killings in East Timor, an official said Monday. "Tomorrow (Tuesday) the investigation team will meet with the armed forces chief (Admiral Widodo Adisucipto) to sort out the procedural steps needed to finalize the findings and take legal steps," said Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights. Darusman, who is also attorney general, was referring to the discovery of 26 bodies in three mass graves in West Timor Thursday by the Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Abuses in East Timor. The bodies are believed to be those of 26 residents from Suai in Covalima district slaughtered during a brutal attack on a church there by Indonesian military and the Laksaur militia on September 6. "The findings confirmed earlier reports about the killings in Suai that the mass graves have a direct connection to what happened on September 6," Darusman told AFP. Three Catholic priests were among the dead and were buried in East Timor after a requiem Mass on Saturday in the territory's cathedral led by Nobel peace laureate Bishop Carlos Ximene Felipe Belo. The remains of 23 others have also been temporarily buried in Dili, witnessed by about 170 local residents who had gathered for the ceremony. 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. Investigations into the brutal killings have begun, with the final postmortem results to be released in a week. "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 commission, told AFP. 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. 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." 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." 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/ |