Jakarta – Journalist Sander Thoenes, found dead in East Timor yesterday, recently exposed a US$250-million scandal at a company controlled by the brother of Lt-General Prabowo Subianto, the former commander of Indonesia's elite special forces or Kopassus.
The Dutch-born journalist, the first reporter killed in a wave of violence in the Indonesian-ruled territory, had covered developments in the country since 1997 after a reporting stint in the former Soviet Union. Witnesses said men wearing military uniforms chased and killed a foreign journalist on Tuesday near dusk in the suburb of Becora, about 3 km from the centre of Dili.
Mr Thoenes, 30, was riding pillion on a motorbike taxi when he and driver Florindo da Conceicao Araujo were attacked. The driver survived, but Mr Thoenes' body was found in a garden yesterday. He had been shot in the torso and his face was mutilated.
Canadian journalist Paul Dillon said: "At 5am, a resident went out to look for something to eat and found a body of a man whom we now know is a colleague. It brings home the danger here... It's very shocking."
He said the body appeared to have been dragged to its resting place. "His pen is lying on the ground, a couple of metres away. His notepad was there as well," Mr Dillon said.
Indonesian army commander for Dili Geerhan Lentora said the Becora area was like the "wild West. We don't know who did this. In this kind of area, many things can happen".
The taxi driver told reporters in Dili that he had taken the journalist from Hotel Turismo to Becora, a known militia hotspot about 4.30pm.
He said they came under fire from six gunmen wearing Indonesian army uniforms, but added that they could have been pro-Jakarta militia, wearing clothes discarded by retreating Indonesian soldiers.
"My motorcycle fell on the ground and dragged both of us for about 100 metres. The journalist fell on the road. They kept shooting and I ran into the jungle."
Maj-General Peter Cosgrove, commander of Interfet, the United Nations-sanctioned force trying to restore order in East Timor, said yesterday that suggestions that the Indonesian military may have been involved would be investigated.
"This style of violence is of course a difficult one to stop immediately because of the disguised nature of it, the random nature of it, the selective nature of it," he said. Indonesian military spokesman Colonel Panggih Sundoro was quoted as denying any military involvement.
In a separate incident on Tuesday, a British reporter and a United States photographer were ambushed on the outskirts of Dili. Veteran Sunday Times reporter Jon Swain and US photographer Chip Hires fled into the bush, hid in a village and phoned their office in London, which sent a message to Interfet in Dili. A rescue operation was mounted and the men were reported to be safe.