Philip Cornford – An assistant to East Timor's spiritual leader, Bishop Carlos Belo, claimed yesterday that he saw the Indonesian intelligence official Major-General Syafrie Syamsuddin direct the separation of boys and men from refugees forced from Bishop Belo's home 11 days ago.

Mr Francisco Kalbuadi, chairman of the Bishop Belo Foundation, said he was present when Indonesian soldiers arrested Bishop Belo 11 days ago and fired on 5,000 refugees who had sought sanctuary in the grounds of the bishop's home in Dili.

Bishop Belo was eventually allowed to fly to Darwin, but the women and children who had sheltered at his home were transported to West Timor, where Mr Kalbuadi said they were being held as hostages.

Speaking in Sydney yesterday, Mr Kalbuadi said the operation was commanded by General Syamsuddin, "who I know personally and who I saw standing in the street outside the compound, giving orders". He had seen a baby and an old woman killed by bullets. "Many others were shot."

He escaped when General Syamsuddin ordered that men and boys of military age be separated from the women and children. "I knew that meant the men were going to be killed," Mr Kalbuadi said. Later, when he escaped to West Timor, the women refugees said the males taken from Bishop Belo's home had disappeared. "General Syamsuddin is responsible for their fate," he said. "It is certain they were murdered."

Mr Kalbuadi said he escaped after a militia leader risked his life by handing over his jacket in the pro-Indonesian colours of red and white.

Dennis Schulz reports from Darwin: Refugees evacuated from Dili gave further details yesterday of mass murders by the Indonesian military. Joao Brito, 15, recounted through an interpreter the murder of perhaps hundreds of people in Ermera on September 4, the day the autonomy ballot results were announced.

An hour after the announcement two trucks full of Kopassus special forces arrived in Ermera, a stronghold of the Aitarak militia, dressed in black Aitarak T-shirts. The soldiers, armed with automatic weapons and cans of petrol, had targeted known pro-independence supporters.

"They called house to house and they burnt out the political leaders," Joao said. "When the houses burn, they let the women and children out, but they push the men back into the fire, where they die."

Joao said the rampaging group marched through the town burning and shooting people and slashing them with machetes. During the slaughter, the killers had openly shown the delight with their work, he said. "They say, 'You dogs. You do not have the right to independence'."

Joao and nine others were rescued by nearby pro-independence Falintil guerillas, who were alerted when smoke began to rise from the town.

[In a September 17 report in the South China Morning Post, Kalbuadi also named two other officers as being responsible for the terror, former military intelligence chief Zacky Anwar and Brigadier-General Glenn Kairupan as being responsible for the terror - James Balowski.]