Lindsay Murdoch, Jakarta – Jakarta has dropped prosecutions against six people who have been under investigation over crimes against humanity in East Timor, including the notorious militia leader Eurico Guterres.
The Attorney-General's office confirmed yesterday that a presidential decree restricted it to prosecuting only 12 of 18 cases it had prepared for a special court to be set up in Jakarta.
United Nations officials and human rights activists have expressed outrage that the decree signed by President Abdurrahman Wahid last week stipulates the court can hear only crimes committed after the August 30, 1999 ballot on East Timor's independence.
Most of the atrocities under investigation were committed before the ballot, but the military pressured Mr Wahid to approve a ballot cut-off date so its members could not be tried for crimes committed during Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor.
A spokesman for the Attorney-General yesterday backed away from an earlier denial that cases would be dropped. "Yes, because of what is stipulated in the presidential decree we're going to set aside some of the cases, meaning they will not be brought before the court," he said. He could not say which cases would be set aside, but only 12 would now proceed.
One long-planned prosecution of Guterres relates to the massacre of 12 people at the home of the independence leader Manuel Carrascalao in April 1999, five months before the ballot. Television footage shows Guterres ordering his men to attack and "kill if necessary" members of the Carrascalao family.
UN officials and human rights activists have described a six-month jail sentence imposed on Guterres by an Indonesian court on Monday on a separate charge as a "slap on the wrist".
The cut-off date will also mean that those responsible for the May 1999 massacre of up to 60 people at a church in Liquica will go unpunished.
Even before Mr Wahid signed the decree, an original list of 22 suspects named by the Attorney-General's office sparked outrage from human rights activists.
The list excluded high-ranking military officers identified by Indonesian and UN investigations as being responsible for the violence, including the former armed forces commander, General Wiranto, Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim and Major-General Syafrie Syamsuddin.
The Attorney-General's office has also omitted from its list of prosecutions four militia leaders who were originally named as suspects, on the grounds that it cannot locate them.
One is Izidio Manek, accused of leading a massacre in the grounds of a church in Suai in September 1999. But on April 18 Indonesian soldiers brought Manek to a government office in the West Timor border town of Atambua, where he was interviewed by the Herald, then allowed to return to a refugee camp where he lives with three wives and a girl, Juliana dos Santos, whom he allegedly abducted from Suai. The Attorney-General's office has also dropped an investigation into the September 1999 murder in Dili of a journalist for the London Financial Times, Sander Thoenes, citing lack of evidence.
A Jakarta-based human rights group, Solidarity Without Borders (Solidamor), met prosecutors on Tuesday to protest at their failure to prosecute those responsible for the East Timor violence, including General Wiranto, and called for the decree to be amended so that crimes committed before the ballot can be prosecuted.