Mark Dodd – One of East Timor's most notorious militia leaders will today meet representatives of the community he left devastated to discuss his return home to face justice. Cancio Lopes de Carvalho, former leader of the Ainaro-based Mahidi (Life or Death Integration) militia says he wants to return to East Timor, with 15,000 supporters who also fled to West Timor after post-independence ballot violence in 1999.

A meeting brokered by the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor is scheduled at the southernmost border post in the Salele forest, 20 kilometres west of Suai, today. Talks earlier this month, facilitated by the UNTAET chief of staff, N. Parameswaran, had focused on Lopes de Carvalho and followers returning to East Timor.

The Ainaro community had expressed its willingness for him to return provided he faced justice for war crimes in 1999 and acknowledged East Timor's status as an independent nation, an UNTAET spokesman said.

The Mahidi militia was one of the worst violators of human rights in East Timor and one of the first to receive arms from the Indonesian military.

East Timorese human rights groups say Lopes de Carvalho had close ties with the former East Timor military commander Brigadier-General Tono Suratman, then a colonel based in Dili.

Ainaro town, once a thriving municipal seat at the base of the southern highlands, was almost destroyed by the retreating Mahidi militia after the announcement of the independence victory on September 4, 1999.

A spokesman for UN military headquarters in Suai said New Zealand and Fijian peacekeepers would provide special security for the reconciliation meeting.