Dili – A commander of one of East Timor's anti-independence militias has admitted he was behind one of the territory's most horrific massacres and claims he was acting on the orders of Indonesian special forces.

Joni Marques, commander of the Team Alpha militia in Los Palos town, told an Indonesian inquiry team he had been responsible for a September 25 ambush in which eight people – two nuns, four male clergy, an Indonesian journalist and a teenage girl – were killed.

The attack took place near Los Palos in a remote part of eastern East Timor shortly after international peacekeepers arrived in the capital, Dili.

"He clearly stated that he's the one that killed eight people in Los Palos and that he was trained by a Kopassus [special forces] unit and that he was ordered also to carry out killings by a number of Kopassus officers," Helmi Fauzi, a member of the inquiry team, told journalists here.

Fauzi is a member of the Indonesian Commission for the Investigation of Human Rights Abuses in East Timor. Marques was interviewed at Dili jail, where he is awaiting trial. The inquiry commissioners have spoken to some 30 witnesses over the last seven days in their second visit to East Timor.

After an earlier visit they concluded that the violence that erupted after East Timor's August 30 vote for independence had involved collusion between the militias, the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) and national police (Polri).

They said they obtained testimony and documents that showed high-ranking members of the Indonesian armed forces and national police were behind the militia.

The commission has now released more detailed allegations about Indonesian support for the militias.

"SGI, a notorious combat intelligence unit dominated by Kopassus members, was heavily involved to set up, arm and co-ordinate the militias in each of the regencies," said Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, another commission member.

But she said SGI was not acting alone. High-ranking military and police officers "actually commanded this operation," she said.

Nursyahbani said the military and police collected, dumped and buried bodies from massacres. They also cleaned the crime scenes to hide evidence, she said.

Military officers were seconded to militia units to co-ordinate operations, which also had close links to civilian authorites such as district heads, she said. Many district heads were in fact leaders of the militias, Nursyahbani said.

The commission focussed on three massacres. Leonard Simanjuntak, an assistant to the commission, said 50 to 100 people died in an attack on September 5-6 at the church in Suai town. Another 50 were murdered on April 5-6 at another church, in the town of Liquica, he said. An attack on September 8 at the police station in Maliana left 30-40 people, Simanjuntak said.

Nursyahbani said the commission obtained documents that show TNI and Polri "planned and implemented the burning of East Timor, as well as forcefully displaced the population to West Timor." She said lists have been found of pro-independence people targetted for death in what she termed "indications of genocide policy." The Indonesian commission was set up following Jakarta's refusal to respect the results of a UN commission of inquiry into the post-ballot violence in East Timor.

The UN commission, which spent nine days in East Timor, is due to report back to Secretary General Kofi Annan by the end of this month. On the basis of their report, Annan will then have to decide whether to recommend the creation of an international war crimes tribunal for East Timor.