Jakarta – An Indonesian court on Wednesday found three East Timorese militiamen not guilty of murdering a New Zealand peacekeeping soldier in East Timor in July 2000.

"The victim had already died from the bullet from the first defendant, Jacobus Bere, therefore there is no reason whatsoever to accuse the defendants here of having killed or planned to kill as accused by the prosecutor," Judge Iskandar Tjake told the Central Jakarta district court. "The defendants are entirely acquitted [of the charges]," Tjake said.

Bere, who was tried separately, was on March 7 sentenced to six years in jail for the murder of Private Leonard William Manning, 24, near Suai in East Timor on July 24, 2000. That sentence drew immediate criticism from New Zealand and the United Nations, who urged Indonesian authorities to appeal for a tougher punishment.

The three other defendants – Fabianus Ulu, Yohanes Timo and Gabriel Halenoni – had been with Bere in East Timor, allegedly to look for a missing cow, when the murder took place. Prosecutor Firdaus Deliamar, who had sought 10 years jail for each of the three, told journalists he planned to appeal directly to the Supreme Court.

Nicolas Abe, one of the defence lawyers, said the three would remain in jail for one or two days until they received the formal court verdict document and would then be moved to the house of former East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres.

The court had heard that the three defendants and Bere, along with two other men who are still on the run, had shot dead Manning in a rugged border area near Indonesian West Timor. The court had been told they crossed the border to look for a missing cow when they ran into a United Nations peacekeeping patrol tracking militia fighters in the area.

Prosecutors had said Bere made sure the victim was dead by cutting his throat with a machete and slashing his ears off. The men also took his firearm.

Bere and the five others were members of pro-Indonesia militias who fled to West Timor shortly after the arrival of international peacekeeping forces in September 1999.

The militias, backed by the Indonesian military, waged a bloody and destructive "scorched earth" revenge campaign after East Timorese voted in August 1999 to split from Indonesia. The international troops largely halted the bloodshed but border skirmishes continued.