Mark Dodd – The column of unarmed East Timorese police had walked less than 100m when the shooting began.
Two soldiers stepped forward, one of them armed with an M-16 rifle. What happened next was random and mind-numbingly brutal.
One soldier pushed a UN policeman aside and raised his rifle to fire four quick bursts of rapid automatic fire into the group of 40 police.
Some started running immediately. Others were cowering. The smaller of the two soldiers sprayed four bursts from his M-16 to the left and to the right. His companion meanwhile fired methodical single shots with his M-4 carbine.
By the time they had finished, 12 policemen lay dead or dying and 20 more were injured.
"I think a couple (of police) had managed to run away. But in front of me was a pile of bodies. It was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life – it was just horrible," a UN policeman told The Weekend Australian.
"A few started to move and others, terribly wounded, tried to get up. We got them into the back of the trucks and took them to hospital. The dead we took to the morgue."
For the first time, The Weekend Australian can reveal the brutal truth about the massacre nine days ago that plunged East Timor towards civil war. We expose the fatal mistake of a UN official who led the police unprotected and on foot through army lines.
Yesterday, the site of the roadside massacre was marked with several small commemorative shrines – puddles of greasy, solidified candle wax and fragments of discarded clothing, including a dark-blue police beret.
It was the worst atrocity committed during weeks of ethnic unrest that have left at least 27 people dead, scores injured, more than 50,000 people displaced and reduced parts of the capital, Dili, to a smouldering ruin.
Sources with the Australian Federal Police say many of the deaths were caused by shots to the head.
On Thursday afternoon, a team of seven AFP investigators combed the crime scene with metal detectors, searching for clues and gathering evidence.
Within a few minutes they filled two plastic bags with empty cartridges – 5.56mm brass shell casings fired from two military weapons, an M-16 assault rifle and an M-4 carbine.
A senior UN civilian police officer, a witness to the slaughter, says UN incompetence was to blame. The officer blamed the senior UN police commander in Dili, Saif Malik from Pakistan, for the carnage.
"Tactically speaking it (the evacuation) was handled as poorly as possible. We (UN Civpol) made every mistake we could," said the officer, who asked not to be named.
By late morning on May 25, the Dili district police headquarters was under siege by the army, an attack many claim was payback for a deadly raid the previous night on the Tasi Tolu army barracks that killed popular officer Captain Kai Keri, allegedly shot by a police marksman.
During the assault on the police headquarters, soldiers used automatic weapons and grenades to blast their way inside.
Bullets ricocheted over parts of the city, some shells bouncing off a shed adjacent to the Dili Hotel, forcing lunchtime diners to scatter. It was a one-sided contest and the police surrendered in a treaty hastily arranged by the UN.
Of special concern was the need to safely evacuate about 40 police officers, many of whom were ethnic westerners, or Loromonu. Other UN police at the scene claim the evacuees were not all western-born and included several easterners (Lorosae).
To get to safety, the 40 unarmed police needed to cross through army lines and a deal was organised for safe passage. The police would march out of their compound flanked by a small group of UN civilian police, all walking in a group between a fleet of eight UN utilities.
According to the UN police officer, the decision for the group to walk out was taken by Malik. None of the UN vehicles was used to transport the police, nor was a police armoured personnel carrier parked at the headquarters.
After the shooting, the two soldiers ran back to their barracks.
The attack drove an ethnic wedge into East Timor's national police force, shattering any last vestiges of unity, at least for those based in Dili. President Xanana Gusmao, appalled at the murder, has promised those responsible will be brought to justice. The army officer wielding the M-16 has been identified, but his whereabouts is unknown.
The killings have served to deepen long-simmering distrust between the army and police. The 3000-strong army comprises majority Lorosae people, including many ex-Falintil pro-independence guerillas, while the 3500 police are mostly from the west, including former members of the Indonesian police – many veterans of the campaign to wipe out the guerillas. Old scores, it seems, are still being settled.