United Nations civilian police have arrested a pro-Indonesian militiaman implicated in one of the first mass murders in East Timor last year.
A spokesman for the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, Mr Refik Hodzic, said yesterday that a man had been arrested at his home in Liquica on Monday over murders committed in April last year.
The suspect, a member of the Besi Merah Putih (Red White Iron) militia, was now in the Dili jail run by international peacekeepers, Mr Hodzic said.
He declined to provide the suspect's name or say which massacre he was allegedly linked to because he had yet to appear before a judge.
East Timor's new judges were only appointed last Friday and would not be able to review the man's case until Monday at the earliest.
UN police believe at least 56 people, and possibly more than 100, were murdered in early April in a church massacre in Liquica.
Days later, 12 or 13 people were killed when militia attacked the home of independence leader Mr Manuel Carrascalao, who had been sheltering refugees in Dili.
They were the first mass killings by Indonesian-backed militias in a campaign of terror before and after an independence ballot on August 30.
Police arrested the murder suspect a day before they began exhuming the bodies of some of the victims from the two April massacres. The bodies were buried in 16 graves beside the sea in the village of Maubara, just west of Liquica and about 45 minutes drive west of the capital, Dili.
The graves were marked with crosses inscribed with the date of their death and their names. A police investigator said it was a clear message to residents that if they supported independence they would also be killed.
Meanwhile, in Jakarta yesterday, the former minister for political and security affairs, Mr Feisal Tanjung, denied seeing documents issued by his ministry in July. The documents, signed by his then expert staff member Major General Garnadi, contained five recommendations, one of them Indonesia's plan to "pull its troops" and simultaneously "destroy vital state objects" if the East Timorese voted for independence.