Joanna Jolly, Dili – International prosecutors on Monday indicted 17 pro-Jakarta militiamen and Indonesian soldiers for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during East Timor's violent break with Indonesia in 1999.

Among those charged was Eurico Gutteres, a notorious militia commander who now heads a youth wing of President Megawati Sukarnoputri's ruling party in Jakarta.

International arrest warrants will be issued for the suspects who are all believed to be in Indonesia, said Siri Frigaard, UN deputy prosecutor general in East Timor.

Under an agreement signed in 2000, Indonesia committed itself to cooperate with UN investigations in East Timor and to extradite suspects. But recently, Megawati's administration has refused to abide by the accord.

So far, 99 people have been charged with crimes committed before, during and after the UN-supervised independence referendum that ended Indonesia's 24-year military occupation of East Timor.

At the time, Indonesian troops and their militia proxies launched a massive campaign of violence in which hundreds of people were murdered and most of East Timor devastated. The bloodbath ended in September 1999 with the arrival of international peacekeepers.

East Timor is currently under temporary UN administration. It is due to achieve independence in May.

Guterres, who led a militia gang based in the capital, Dili, was charged with five counts of crimes against humanity for allegedly ordering his men to shoot pro-independence activists during a rally, and leading an attack on a separatist leader's home in April 1999.

Guterres, who now heads the Indonesian Young Bulls – part of Megawati's ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle – immediately denied he had anything to do with the raid, saying he was not in Dili at the time of the attack.

I also reject the Interpol request for my extradition because I am an Indonesian citizen," he said. "It is up to my government to decide whether to hand over or not."