Jakarta – Indonesian police have returned cash and valuables taken from students during raids in the wake of a separatist attack in the eastern province of Irian Jaya, a rights advocate said Monday.

"Last night and today some police officers have been turning up at the dormitories and giving back certificates, money and belongings that were taken during the raids," John Rumbiak, program supervisor at the Institute for Human Rights Study and Advocacy (ELSHAM), told AFP.

The return of the goods follows a report released by ELSHAM last week outlining police treatment of the students. The report highlighted raids which followed a December 7 attack on a police station and market on the fringes of the capital Jayapura.

"We said in our report that the police had taken money and belongings, based on what the students told us," Rumbiak said. "This seems to have upset the police the most. They are more focused on the thefts as insults, than on the torture and deaths in custody we mentioned."

ELSHAM's report also accused police of summary executions and torture of students in retribution for the pre-dawn attack at Abepura, in which two policemen and a security guard were killed by men armed with primitive tribal weapons and home-made rifles.

After releasing the report last week, ELSHAM's director Johannes Bonai was interrogated for 24 hours. "I was questioned as a suspect for violating libel laws," Bonai told AFP by phone from Jayapura. "They told me the case was ongoing and that I would be summonsed again."

Officers said they planned to further question Rumbiak on Monday, but as of 8.30pm he had received no summons or formal notification. "Police just want to ask him about several statements he's made in the press and to the public about people dying in detention," Irian Jaya police chief Brigadier-General Sylvanus Wenas told AFP by phone from Jayapura."

ELSHAM on Thursday urged the National Commission on Human Rights to investigate the violence.

Jayapura police chief Daud Sihombing told AFP on December 7 that police had killed three people they were pursuing after the attack. He added that police had taken the three corpses to the Jayapura Public Hospital and requested autopsies.