Reporter: Ross Coulthart

Producer: In collaboration with Max Stahl of Gillan Films

Ross Coulthart: It's early Sunday morning here in the town of Suai in East Timor. Sunday mass is a time when the many devoutly Catholic East Timorese take pause from the labours of rebuilding their community. It's a sombre occasion because the people of Suai also carry terrible spiritual wounds.

In and around this very same church nearly three years ago somewhere between 50 to 200 people were massacred – hacked to bits with machetes, blown apart with grenades or shot by paramilitaries armed, aided and abetted by Indonesian military and police. This makeshift memorial just outside the church, sits on the spot where the Indonesian military commander tried to burn a pile of corpses doused with fuel. How many people died here is impossible to say with certainty because Indonesia was allowed the time to cover up its crimes. In 1991 these images of the slaughter of possibly as many as 400 innocent protesters by Indonesian troops jolted the world's attention to the brutality of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. As you'll see today, the man who risked his life to shoot those images – British film-maker Max Stahl – was also one of the first people to visit massacre sites across East Timor in 1999. Stahl has gathered evidence from witnesses and extraordinary admissions from perpetrators, including this militia's thug's account of his role in a death squad murder.

Pedro Maia - Translation: They brought the people to kill them and they were all killed.

Ross Coulthart: Yet, despite such blatant admissions of criminality, the UN Serious Crimes Unit has told its local police here that there's no evidence this man was militia. As we discovered when we travelled East Timor with Max Stahl last month, many militia killers are now back living unacknowledged by the justice system among the residents they once terrorised. And the senior military and paramilitary leaders who ordered them to kill, are living just across the border in Indonesia with apparent impunity.

Max Stahl, British film maker: If they don't get accountability here, if they don't get justice for the people who committed these crimes, then those same people who are today in positions of power, almost all of them have been promoted in some form, will not only have escaped, they will have rubbed the noses and the faces of the Democrats and the would-be Democrats in Indonesia in the blood that they themselves spread over Indonesian democratic aspirations.

Ross Coulthart: In 1999 a crime against humanity of monstrous, calculated brutality was allowed to happen here because the international community, the UN, Australia, allowed itself to be intimidated by Indonesian military-sponsored murder. The world withdrew from here and hundreds died. Three years on, the people of East Timor are still waiting for justice. And yet again, the international community is failing to deliver what it promised. In the wake of the appalling violence across East Timor in 1999, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, pledged there would be justice. He appointed a commission to recommend action to implement justice for the crimes committed here in East Timor. In early 2000 that commission recommended an international tribunal as in the Balkans and Rwanda. But Indonesia demanded the right to prosecute its own criminals and to the dismay of many international and Indonesian human rights groups, the UN Security Council delayed its decision on an international tribunal, pending Indonesian Government prosecutions like this so-called ad hoc tribunal now running in a Jakarta courtroom. These derisory hearings are seriously flawed. These five defendants are only charged with failing to prevent the Suai massacre, not with ordering it and then covering it up as several witnesses could testify some of them did. Several key East Timorese witnesses refused to come to Jakarta to testify, not least because of the violent threats made by stage-managed rent-a-crowds like this one right outside the courthouse.

Filomena Barros Dos Rais: The ad hoc tribunal for me is a drama, only as a drama done by the Indonesian Government to close the eyes of the international people.

Ross Coulthart: At this public forum in the East Timorese town of Liquica last month Indonesian human rights lawyer, Mr Hendardi, implored the women who lost husbands and sons in the Liquica massacre to dismiss the Jakarta tribunals as a show trial. Filomena Barros dos Rais works as a counsellor for the surviving women victims who were raped or lost loved ones at Liquica and other atrocities. She is perplexed and angry that the UN is urging East Timor to reconcile with Indonesia when it still hasn't delivered the justice it promised.

Filomena Barros Dos Rais: How can the people be reconciliated without justice? How can I be reconciliated with one people who kill my husband, raped me, took all of these things and make me like an animal, how can I reconciliate them? How can I reconciliate with the people consider me as a mosquitoes? How can I reconciliate? I want ... I can give support for the reconciliation but the reconciliation must be with justice.

Ross Coulthart: Some of these junior and middle ranking officers may be convicted in this Indonesian court, but as you'll see today, while growing evidence indicates the orders for the destruction of East Timor came from the top of the Indonesian military and government, the senior leaders with blood on their hands are unlikely to face charges. Instead, last month this terrified survivor of the Suai massacre Domingos dos Santos Mouzinho was forced to give her evidence under the theatrical glare of row after row of Indonesia's top generals. It's in Indonesia's interests as much as East Timor's that the generals among them, who ordered the killing, be brought to justice.

Mari Alkatiri, East Timorese PM: Above all we have to respond, we have to clearly ... to the expectation of the people. People are expecting justice.

Ross Coulthart: Do you want an international tribunal to investigate these crimes that were committed.

Mari Alkatiri: If I am the Security Council of the UN I will approve an international tribunal.

Ross Coulthart: The UN Serious Crimes Unit is expecting to complete draft indictments later this month on the massacres at Suai and Liquica. It will recommend prosecutions of many Indonesian military and paramilitary figures. But most of them are across the border in Indonesia. As East Timor's PM admits, without an international tribunal to bring those accused to justice, such indictments are useless. What would you expect if an indictment is issued, for example, against senior Indonesian military, what would you like ...

Mari Alkatiri: Here in East Timor?

Ross Coulthart: Yes.

Mari Alkatiri: Yes, in theory we can do it but in practice this will be difficult if we don't have real support from the international community.

Ross Coulthart: Well, would you expect the international community to demand and place ...

Mari Alkatiri: We would like to have the international community on our side to demand it.

Ross Coulthart: You would like to see it place the pressure on Indonesia ...

Mari Alkatiri: Of course.

Ross Coulthart: ... to hand those people over?

Mari Alkatiri: Of course, of course.

Ross Coulthart: Three years ago Sunday reported from Dili on how the Indonesian military and government was blatantly inciting the militia mobs to terrorise the East Timorese so they would vote to stay part of Indonesia. The then military commander, Colonel Tono Suratman, made this now infamous pledge to Sunday.

Col. Tono Suratman, Indonesian Military Commander - Translation: I want to give you this message: If the pro-independence side wins, it's not going to just be the government of Indonesia that has to deal with what follows. The UN and Australia are also going to have to solve the problem and well, if this does happen, then there'll be no winners. Everything is going to be destroyed. East Timor won't exist as it does now. It'll be much worse than 23 years ago.

Ross Coulthart: In early September 1999 in the wake of the overwhelming pro-independence vote, the world watched on in horror and disbelief. UN workers cowered inside a Dili compound as the militia began to implement Suratman's pledge. Terrified refugees just outside were fired upon and shot by militia and military as they tried to flee. Max Stahl filmed these scenes in the UN compound shortly after Colonel Suratman's supposedly peacekeeping soldiers had fired tracer rounds over the heads of refugees. And as the UN made its now infamous decision to abandon East Timor because of the mounting violence, Stahl was the only television journalist to follow the panicked refugees on their harrowing journey into the hills. His infra-red camera recorded this now famous image of a child stumbling on the hill in the pitch darkness, too frightened to scream in pain because two other people had been shot dead on the same slope that day. As he filmed what he saw, it gradually dawned on Max Stahl that this wasn't spontaneous mob violence at all, but a deliberate strategy of terror.

Max Stahl: Well, I was not sure what the hell was going on. I really wasn't. It was very odd, you know. These people were setting about burning, killing, it seemed partly at random but then it was plainly not at random, it was systematic.

Ross Coulthart: From the hills above Dili, Max Stahl filmed the violence below. By looting, burning, beating and killing, Indonesian troops and paramilitaries forced 300,000 East Timorese to flee across the border to squalid refugee camps in West Timor. Indonesian troops then set about hunting down and killing those hiding in the hills. This man was shot looking for food. This mother was murdered by Indonesian troops as she hid from them in a coffee grove. She'd stayed with her husband because he was paralysed and couldn't flee the mob.

Max Stahl: When I fled up into the hills there were tens of thousands of people there, there were families sitting on their suitcases wondering whether they should run left or right but essentially, this was a massacre waiting to happen. And all around us we could see the burning of the houses coming closer.

Ross Coulthart: For Max Stahl, it took a chance-meeting with an East Timorese man who'd fled working with the Indonesian police to reveal just what was planned for the people hiding in the hills.

Max Stahl: And he said that they had been told, in the police, that they were going to take everybody out of East Timor, all those who would go to Indonesia and then they were going to attack the mountains where the refugees and the others who wouldn't flee had taken refuge. And they were going to attack it with sea power, land forces and air power. In other words, they were going to slaughter them.

Ross Coulthart: Then Max filmed this young seminary student who told an incredible story of a massacre at Suai, claiming three priests were among those murdered.

Student: They killed many people in the church and among the peoples or refugees in the church there are three priests. After they kill all of them they burn, they burned the refugees and priests as well.

Ross Coulthart: When Australian troops finally arrived nearly two weeks after the mayhem began, Stahl was impatient to begin investigating the swirling rumours of massacres at Suai and Liquica.

Max Stahl: When we came down, I was therefore looking for the evidence of mass killings and initially we couldn't find it.

Ross Coulthart: As he drove out of Dili ahead of the INTERFET troops, he found this hastily burned truckload of bodies – grim evidence of just how Indonesia had used the UN withdrawal to hide the corpses of victims, trucking many across the border to shallow graves in Indonesia.

Max Stahl: I spoke to some militia people who told me that they had been a party to the disposal of the bodies in the sea here near where we're now sitting and that they had systematically taken bodies even to West Timor and buried them in remote locations. But at that stage we were being told by those forces, the INTERFET forces who had come in and by those people who had arrived on the aeroplane, some of the journalists who were writing this, that really it was clear that far fewer people had died than anybody had thought.

Ross Coulthart: Impatient with such claims, within a week of the INTERFET arrival in East Timor, Stahl was the first person to find evidence of mass murder. Here at a remote well near the town of Liquica, half an hour outside Dili. This local told Max and his assistant, Jose Belo, how the well was originally two rope lengths or about 15 to 20m deep. In September 1999 it was cramped with a soupy slurry of decaying corpses.

Jose Belo, assistant to Max Stahl: He can't say that how many people are inside the well but it's of course so many people inside because it's now we can see it's very ... it's full, eh? It's mostly full.

Max Stahl: So if he was to guess how many people were in that well, would he say 5 or 10?

Jose Belo: He say that ... he says a lot of people killed. Liquica and Maubara. He said he took them and threw them down here or inside the lake, the salt lakes.

Ross Coulthart: Last month, three years on, from that grizzly discovery, many of the Liquica women still looking for their husbands from 1999 abductions told us how they'd never heard of the well site. So we took several women out to see the site Max had found. But to our amazement, all traces of the well had been obliterated.

Max Stahl: I find it astonishing, absolutely astonishing.

Ross Coulthart: There's nothing here, is there? There's nothing to commemorate.

Max Stahl: There's no sign here and this is a grave site.

Ross Coulthart: The UN later conceded to us that it should have told the people of Liquica what had happened here. At the very least, bulldozing this grave site without explanation was culturally insensitive. It's a vital part of East Timorese culture to find something of someone who has died.

Jose Belo: If we just found a piece of bone or clothes, it's for us very meaningful.

Ross Coulthart: INTERFET soldiers had removed 11 bodies from the well in October of 1999 but in the words of press statements issued at the time, they had to abandon other bodies when the well became unsafe. So it's not at all inconceivable that one of these ladies could be standing on the last resting place of her dead husband?

Max Stahl: It's very possible. None of them know, or almost none. Out of all of these ladies only one has ever found the body of her husband who was killed.

Ross Coulthart: For these women it only serves to exacerbate the trauma of their loss that the UN Serious Crimes Unit now contradicts the earlier INTERFET statement. It now says it did extract all the bodies. Do you believe that there are still bodies at the bottom of that well?

Max Stahl: Yes, I do, yeah.

Ross Coulthart: What, at the very least, should the UN have done, by their own rules, to satisfy a proper, full investigation into that well?

Max Stahl: Well, by their own rules they should have extracted all the human remains. I'm quoting officers from the serious crimes unit here. They should have informed the local people, consulted with the local people as to how that might be done, where they were going to keep the remains until they had done their analysis and who ... where they should bury them afterwards and who might, amongst the families, have family members amongst these remains.

Ross Coulthart: Many East Timorese are now seriously questioning the will of the international community to properly investigate the crimes such as those committed here at Liquica church in April 1999. Indonesian soldiers fired tear gas on refugees who'd fled into the compound. Militia then stormed in and hacked at least 50 people to death. Yet again, their bodies were taken away to an undisclosed location. Jose Nunes Serao was one of the lucky few who survived – left for dead with this gigantic machete slash in his neck. He's frustrated the UN and police don't seem to want to know where the bodies are all buried, that returning militia men just make up stories to explain where they hid those they murdered. Do you think there is a risk that if you do not get justice, some people in the community may take justice into their own hands?

Jose Nunes Serao, survivor - Translation: If there is no justice here, it will create hatred and revenge and our leaders, if they don't bring justice here there won't be peace here, there can't be peace here, we have to make justice in order to be able live together.

Ross Coulthart: As you'll see in part two, if East Timorese don't get justice, many will demand retribution.

Ross Coulthart: We're crossing the breathtaking mountain ranges of central East Timor en route to Suai, the scene of perhaps the worst massacre of the 1999 violence. When Max Stahl drove through here in October of 1999, ahead of the INTERFET troops, it was an empty waste land of burned homes and death.

Max Stahl: Yeah, it was very, very spooky. It was completely abandoned, even animals were spooked and I didn't know if the militia was still there.

Ross Coulthart: Stahl got to Suai just as fathers and sons discovered the massacre scene at the church. They had fled to the hills believing their old folk, wives and children would be safe in the Suai church with the three Catholic priests.

Max Stahl: I would have said that it was impossible that Timorese people would commit this kind of a sacrilege as well as an atrocity. So I was shocked and stunned to see the evidence of this slaughter.

Ross Coulthart: Several months before the tragedy, the much-respected local Catholic priest, Father Hilario, had flatly accused the Indonesian army of complicity in the militia violence.

Father Hilario, Suai Catholic Priest - Translation: They're distributing guns to civilians to pro-autonomy people who are against the resistance and against a referendum for freedom and independence. They give them guns.

Ross Coulthart: Thousands of terrified refugees filled the church yard, hoping they would at least be safe here.

Max Stahl: The priests were unable to get the people to leave this area because there had been a coordinated terror campaign going on for months.

Ross Coulthart: But the priests knew a massacre was planned.

Max Stahl: Father Hilario got so desperate that he is said to have taken a stick to these people and said, "Look, this is a charnel house, this is a graveyard. "Unless you leave here, I'll beat you into the bushes." But every time people left, others who were being terrorised in this whole area came in.

Ross Coulthart: At about 1:30 on the afternoon of September 6 1999, Indonesian military, police and paramilitary militia surrounded the Suai church ground and began the slaughter.

Max Stahl: It was plainly an order that was given from a central place, an order that followed within hours of the withdrawal of the UN representatives who had been here in Suai and who had alerted everybody they could think of alerting to the danger of such a massacre taking place.

Ross Coulthart: As hundreds of terrified villagers cowered inside the church, a Javanese priest named Father Dewanto was hacked to death in front of them by a militia thug called Olivio Bau Tato. One of the leaders of the Laksaur militia, Isidio Manek, then shot Father Hilario.

Max Stahl: A guy called Isidio Manek shot him with a rifle from around about here, somewhere.

Ross Coulthart: A third priest, Father Francisco, was hauled down to this Virgin Mary statue by Olivio Bau and a henchman known as Ameriko.

Max Stahl: And there they said to him, "Right, let's see if your God will save you."

Ross Coulthart: They then hacked him to death. And as the day went on, as many as 200 of the refugees were killed in appalling ways.

Max Stahl: Some of them were shot as they tried to climb into the scaffolding and others were murdered, knifed, on the ground area.

Ross Coulthart: And all the time the Indonesian military and police are watching on and shooting.

Max Stahl: Yes.

Ross Coulthart: But where are the bodies of all those killed in the violence both before and after the referendum? In the first few days of his visit in 1999 Stahl was led by locals to one massacre site just outside Suai near a village called Fatu Kuan. Cattle were eating what had once been 10 to 15 dumped corpses.

Max Stahl: It was surprising but there was still the identity cards attached to one skeleton, it was in pieces, but the ID cards were scattered around and there were two or three of them all of them with the same name, the same identity and this name was Moises Barros, he was a medical worker of some kind. I left one ID card there for whoever might find it and I took with me a card and I filmed both. The card I took with me I gave to INTERFET. This is one of the times I did that, not just for the sake of them trying to find this person but also because I wanted to see what they would do with it.

Ross Coulthart: What did they do with it?

Max Stahl: Nothing.

Ross Coulthart: Yet, hard evidence of who'd done the killing is here to be found. This villager told Stahl how he'd seen militia abducting one of Moises Barros's neighbours. The militia men were the same two members of a Laksaur militia death squad who had killed two priests at the church massacre, Olivio Bau Tato and Ameriko.

Florinda Jose De Deus - Translation: His eyes were covered by Olivio. He was tied up by Ameriko. After he was tied like that, they threw him into the car. Then they tied him to the car to a piece of pipe. Then they tell us that they have to kill him because his name's on the list. He's in the red line.

Ross Coulthart: A year after the killing, here in the Raihanek refugee camp in West Timor right next door to an Indonesian military guard post, Max Stahl came face-to-face with those militia killers.

Olivio Bau Tato: Olivio.

Max Stahl: Olivio?

Olivio Bau Tato: Yes.

Ross Coulthart: This is the notorious Olivio Bau Tato living with no obvious fear of prosecution, only a few kilometres across the border in Indonesia. Known as Scorpion, because of the prominent tattoo on his cheek, he personally murdered one of the Suai priests. The man in the red head scarf is Ameriko, his accomplice. And just down the road is the comfortable home of Isidio Manek, the militia leader who shot Father Hilario. How important is it to those people who survived that the Olivio Bau de Tatos, the Amerikos and all the other killers be brought to justice?

Max Stahl: I think it's obviously important because the people cannot ... There is a limit to what you can achieve with reconciliation. People who have got blood on their hands cannot be easily integrated into that society again. There is a sense and a strong sense amongst many of the victims and their families that in due course justice will be done and that justice must be done in the proper way.

Ross Coulthart: But back across the border, there is little indication anyone wants the real killers brought to justice. These Fijian UN troops were encouraging Fatu Kuan villagers to accept reconciliation by returning a former militia man to the village. His name is Pedro Maia. Why and how Pedro Maia was allowed to return to Fatu Kuan village without being charged is a mystery to the locals here. Initially Maia admitted only that he was militia but he denied any violence.

Max Stahl - Translation: Did you have to do any crimes with them?

Pedro Maia - Translation: No.

Max Stahl - Translation: Have you killed anyone?

Pedro Maia - Translation: No.

Ross Coulthart: But Pedro Maia finally admitted being a member of the same death squad as Olivio Bau Tato and Ameriko. He took Max Stahl and some locals to the site where it's likely Moises Barros and others from the town were killed by his group. He showed how victims were slashed to death with a machete.

Pedro Maia - Translation: They brought the people to kill them and they were all killed. Commander Olivio threatened if we don't kill these people he will kill us.

Ross Coulthart: Maia has since suggested he didn't actually do any killing, that he merely dipped his machete in blood. But this Suai local, Florinda Jose de Deus, remembers Pedro Maia threatening to kill him.

Florinda Jose De Deus - Translation: He showed me a machete and told me he wanted to cut my head off.

Ross Coulthart: The village chief, Manuel Barros Verdil, kept these detailed notes of the killings during the '99 violence in the hope the murders in his community might some day be investigated.

Ross Coulthart: Have you had any contact, Mr Manuel, with the UN? Have the police spoken to you? Have any of the investigators come to talk to you or people in your village about the crimes that these young men were involved in?

Manuel Barros Verdil, village chief - Translation: Not yet.

Ross Coulthart: As best they can, the people of Fatu Kuan village are putting their lives back together, helping each other rebuild homes destroyed in the militia violence. There is a genuine desire for reconciliation, no better illustrated by the fact that two more former death squad militia men are helping in this clean up with many villagers they once terrorised. Tadeo Mendonza and Augustino Gusmao were members of the same murderous group led by Olivio Bau and as Tadeo eventually admitted to us, he was there at Suai church on the day of the massacre, with his machete.

Ross Coulthart to villagers: I'll show you some pictures. Maybe if you can tell us if you recognise the people in these pictures. Okay. Are we ready? I'll show you these pictures now. Here was firsthand evidence from Olivio Bau's henchmen of murder.

Ross Coulthart: Tell me, Pedro, what did Olivio do?

Pedro Baia - Translation: He killed some people. Ross Coulthart: And then this admission from Todeo which clearly came as a shock to many of the villagers.

Ross Coulthart: Were any of you four men, were any of you at the massacre that took place at the church at Suai? MAN 1: No.

Ross Coulthart: What about you?

Man 2: No.

Ross Coulthart: Were you there? Interpreter: Yes, he was there.

Ross Coulthart: Do the villagers know what these men did?

Interpreter: They know.

Ross Coulthart: Is there any doubt in your mind that some of those young men that we've been filming in your village who were militia have killed people or hurt people?

Interpreter: They're killers, yes.

Ross Coulthart: What worries Max Stahl, who now knows this community very well, is the message that the international community is sending to these villagers by not even acknowledging the crimes of these militia men. Because, to Stahl's amazement, he was shown a letter by a UN CivPol policeman in Suai from the UN's Serious Crimes Investigation Unit in Dili. It asserted Pedro Maia was never a militia man.

Max Stahl: Maybe Pedro Maia was not the worst criminal, perhaps he wasn't, even though he threatened to kill people and behead them, and even though he was party to murder, maybe he wasn't the big fish, as they put it. Maybe he only really is a small fish. But when you're shown, as I was, a letter by a CivPol officer who himself was beside himself with anger, coming from the central prosecutor's office here in which it stated that this man who had confessed to murder who had actually shown me how he'd killed people and whose victims had been found and named, was not even, according to them, or shall I quote: "There was no evidence that he was even a member of the militia", you begin to wonder.

Ross Coulthart: Right next door to the NZ army base near Suai the villagers of Holbelis also told us of their fears that this man, Rui Simplicio, had been allowed back into their community.

Max Stahl: His brother is a translator for the New Zealand battalion. So he has a military mosquito net.

Ross Coulthart: Oh, I see. I see. Again, Simplicio admits that he was militia.

Rui Simplicio: Yes.

Ross Coulthart: There are people here in the village who say that they saw you come home on the day of the Suai massacre with blood on your shirt and blood on your knife. Did you kill people?

Max translates for Rui Simplicio: He says he didn't kill anybody. It was blood of a girl who died in the church that he lifted into the ambulance to take to the hospital or into the car to take to the hospital.

Ross Coulthart: Do you believe him, Max?

Max Stahl: I don't believe there was any ambulance there or any cars that went to the hospital.

Ross Coulthart: You think he's lying? Max Stahl: Yes.

Ross Coulthart: Only a few houses away this woman, Filomena Cardoso, clearly remembered what Simplicio said when he returned to the village covered with blood on the day of the Suai massacre.

Filomena Cardoso - Max translates: She saw him with a knife and with a shirt on his blood and he said, "This isn't blood from animals, this is blood from people. "All the priests have died and all the people are dead." He said that he had killed Father Hilario and a woman from a village called Fatu Mea.

Ross Coulthart: In towns across East Timor, including Baucau, east of Dili, so-called veterans groups are becoming a rallying point for those angry that the killers in the community have not been brought to justice. But all is not as it seems. Most members of the so-called veterans groups emerging all over Timor are not in fact guerilla army veterans at all. Most worrying of all is this so-called commission for the popular defence of East Timor, or the CPD-RDTL, responsible for this recent attack on a senior pro-independence leader. Sunday can reveal the CPD-RDTL was in fact set up under the direction of this man, Major General Zacky Anwar Makarim, of Indonesian military intelligence.

Leandro Isaac, deputy leader of PSD (Social Democrat Party of East Timor) - Translation: Zacky Anwar is a strategic master of Indonesian intelligence strategy in Timor and he wasn't put on trial. And he continues active today. All the instability we've been talking about, it is neither more or less than Zacky Anwar instigating it.

Max Stahl: It's ironic that the issue of justice could be manipulated by the very people responsible for the atrocities and that's what seems to be happening here, at the margins at least. But if there is no credible system, then you fracture that society between the victims and the perpetrators. The perpetrators themselves are afraid and they're very afraid because they have secrets to hide.

Ross Coulthart: An East Timorese border checkpoint near the Indonesian town of Atambua last month. Australian diggers are providing security for a potentially explosive reunion. Leaders of the paramilitary militia groups that terrorised Luquica are visiting to see if it's okay to come home.

US UN official: Do we know if there are any of the ex-militia that have been charged or linked with any serious crimes, murders, rapes? What type of crimes have they committed?

Ross Coulthart: This is the ideal of reconciliation the UN clearly sees as a quick fix solution for the divisions that have so badly fractured East Timor. This so-called political militia man, Pedro Souza, is in fact a former regional deputy commander of the dreaded BMP militia gang that went on murder rampages in and around Lukasa. He was warmly welcomed back by locals despite the fact that some of their loved ones were almost certainly killed by men under his command. But there's no mistaking the anger from many of the Lukasa townsfolk kept behind the fence for this curious reunion.

US Civpol: Ok. But you should authorise them. You need to authorise that. They can't just come and talk to anybody.

Ross Coulthart: What the UN didn't want us to film was this East Timorese policeman, Jeraldo Soares confronting this man, Massulino Lopez. Lopez, it turned out, wasn't political militia at all. He'd beaten Jeraldo and left him for dead three years ago. Is he sorry for what he did.

Jose interpreting for Massulino Lopez: Yes, he said. Are you worried that you may be prosecuted for the crimes that you committed? Because what we have done in the past we must recognise it is wrong. I have to confess that it was wrong. I admit what I did.

Ross Coulthart: But most of the militia killers aren't admitting anything and unless the UN gets serious about pursuing them, these men will almost certainly get away with murder.