Jill Jolliffe – The house in East Timor's second city, Baucau, stands derelict, its windows boarded up and a tap running endlessly inside. The family which lived there fled with the Indonesian forces and their militia allies after the 1999 vote for independence. The single word "Hunter" is painted on one wall, and on the front of the house are the Indonesian words Rakyat Timor Siaplah Melarat ("East Timorese People: Prepare for Misery"). It is repeated on the back door – in what appears to be blood.
This was the home of the seemingly respectable Christoforus da Silva, who could be seen attending Mass each day with his three daughters and who had become a member of the local parliament in 1985. The same Christoforus da Silva is now being sought for the murders of five Australian-based journalists in East Timor more than 25 years ago. United Nations investigators have sought international warrants to arrest da Silva and two others, including a former Indonesian government minister. They believe they have enough evidence to prosecute the three for the murders at Balibo on October 16, 1975.
The investigation was carried out by the national investigation unit of the UN Civilian Police (Civpol) in East Timor. A source close to the UN administration in East Timor said the police had asked the UN's Prosecutor-General in Dili, Mohamed Othman, to authorise the arrest of Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah, the former Cabinet minister; Domingos Bere, an East Timorese; and da Silva, an Indonesian.
At the time of the killings, Yunus was an Indonesian army captain commanding an elite RPKAD (commando-special forces) unit called Team Susi, involved in the covert invasion of what was then Portuguese Timor. Da Silva and Bere were members of the unit.
The source said the UN investigators had recommended the men be charged with crimes against humanity under the 1949 Geneva Convention. Othman said the review would determine if further evidence was needed and under which law the accused, whom he did not name, should be charged. "Indications are that this will proceed as a war crimes charge. There we have jurisdiction." He said a decision on the request for warrants would be made in Dili in "about a week".
If the warrants are granted, Yunus, who rose to lieutenant-general, will be the first senior Indonesian official charged with war crimes since UN forces moved into East Timor in 1999.
The international investigation team obtained evidence that Yunus, Bere and da Silva murdered the five television reporters as they were filming a dawn attack on Balibo. Those killed were Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart and Gary Cunningham of Channel 7, and Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie of Channel 9. Peters and Rennie were British citizens; Cunningham was a New Zealander.
The evidence disputes claims that the men were killed in crossfire in the heat of battle. Three witnesses taken to the crime scene to re-enact events have positively identified the wanted men. The UN police team had a breakthrough last October when it found a faded photograph of da Silva which enabled them to confirm his identity.
The UN's Balibo dossier has not been closed, and other Indonesian soldiers are still being investigated. Little information is available about Bere, except that he is a native of Balibo who has served in the police guard of various Indonesian-installed governors of East Timor.
In 1999 he was a member of the Aitarak militia. All three men are in Indonesia. The investigators want Indonesia to hand them over for trial by an international court in Dili, under an agreement signed with Jakarta last April.
The international police team that investigated the Balibo killings was formed last July under John Skeffington, a retired West Australian police superintendent, with case officer Tom Hanlon of the Australian Federal Police. Skeffington and Hanlon completed their six-month secondment to the UN in November. The team has since been headed by James Osborne, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The Australian Government, which has conducted four inconclusive investigations into the killings since 1975, has not had access to the inquiry.
The families of the dead men allege that a cover-up remains in place over the deaths, stemming from acquiescence in the annexation of the Portuguese colony in 1975 by the then Labor government.
Accusations that Yunus was involved in the murders date from 1979 when an anonymous East Timorese witness testified in Portugal that he had seen him command the Balibo attack. In 1998 the ABC's Foreign Correspondent screened a program with Olandino Guterres, another witness, who also accused Yunus. This evidence was reinforced in June, 1999, by former militia leader Tomas Gonalves, who commanded Timorese auxiliary forces in Balibo. He said he saw Yunus fire on the men and that the commander later warned Timorese soldiers against revealing what they had seen.
After the Balibo killings, Yunus, a native of Sulawesi, attended two military training courses in the United States in 1979, and in Britain in 1989. In 1998 Suharto's successor, B.J. Habibie, appointed him Minister of Information, a post he held until the government of Abdurrahman Wahid was formed in October, 1999.
Yunus has consistently denied involvement in the deaths. In an interview with the Herald in June, 1999, he admitted for the first time that he led the Balibo attack, but denied any knowledge of the journalists' deaths.
Da Silva is a native of Flores island, close to Timor. Alberto Carvalho, who testified to the UN, participated in a separate, filmed re-enactment of the deaths in Balibo with this correspondent last August. He alleged that da Silva fired on three of the journalists from close range inside the Balibo house where they had taken sanctuary.
Carvalho said that, from the veranda of the house, he saw da Silva, accompanied by another Indonesian whom he could not identify, with one of the journalists standing with his hands up in surrender.
Two other journalists were huddling on the floor just inside the door frame. He said the man standing shouted that he was an Australian: "[Chris] fired a round. He fell, on top of the other two." He said da Silva then fired on the other two. At the same time, the Indonesian with da Silva fired on the two journalists on the floor. Carvalho made no mention of the other two reporters in the house.
In a similar filmed re-enactment, Guterres, the Foreign Correspondent witness, showed where he saw da Silva kill the last journalist to die after he had barricaded himself in a bathroom. He had earlier seen Yunus fire on the journalists at the front of the house, in the first moments of the attack.
The accused man was known only as Chris (or Kris) to the Timorese irregulars in those days. He had a reputation for cruelty. Few had heard of him since.
Despite the respectability da Silva found in Baucau, he was feared by the locals, who knew nothing about Balibo but whispered about his activities in the 1980s when he was attached to Indonesian territorial Battalion 745.
In the closing days of their investigation, UN police received a tip-off that da Silva had been involved in the 1983 mass killings in the Kraras district near Viqueque, 50 kilometres south of Baucau.
On August 8 of that year an Indonesian engineering battalion at Kraras was attacked and 15 Indonesian soldiers were killed. Seventy East Timorese serving with the Indonesian army then defected to the resistance.
Indonesian troops were rushed to the area, among them Prabowo Subianto, former Prisident Soeharto's son-in-law, then a captain. Da Silva was already there as an RPKAD officer attached to C Company of Battalion 745.
What is known is the Kraras massacre was a series of reprisal killings beginning on September 7, 1983, and culminating 10 days later in the machine-gunning of 184 unarmed villagers at a river bank called Tahu Bein where villagers were lured on the pretext of receiving food supplies and then executed en masse by firing squad. Three hid under the pile of corpses and survived.
It had been carried out with precise planning. Joao Caetano was then working with Prabowo as an intelligence agent, said Prabowo was overall commander, co-ordinating operations. He also knew "Chris" in this period: "I worked in Indonesian intelligence, for the red berets. I never spoke to Chris but I saw him regularly; he worked in the secret service of the red-beret [RPKAD] command, and worked with Prabowo Subianto."
Those who fear him in Baucau believe "Chris" was one of the killers at the river bank. UN investigators hope to interview Timorese who served in Battalion 745, as well as those in the militia units as part of a fresh inquiry into the Kraras killings.
[Jill Jolliffe is a Darwin-based journalist who has reported in East Timor since 1975. Research for this article was carried out in the truggle