Jill Jollife, Dariwn – An Australian Army intelligence officer who served in East Timor has accused the Federal Government of concealing vital evidence on Indonesian army and militia war crimes in 1999.
Captain Andrew Plunkett, of 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, has alleged that a massacre of more than 40 people at a police station in the border town of Maliana in September, 1999, might not have occurred if the government had acted on intelligence information predicting the killings.
He also alleged that Australian soldiers from the International Force in East Timor who entered Maliana after the massacre had orders to understate the death toll.
As a serving officer, Captain Plunkett risks prosecution for his declarations, made in an interview with The Age and in greater detail in a two-part edition of SBS's Dateline that begins tonight. But he said he wanted the truth told regardless of the penalty.
A spokesman for Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said last night the minister denied the allegations. "We would absolutely reject any assertion we were withholding information relating to the safety of people on the ground," the spokesman said. Mr Downer also denied claims that soldiers were ordered to understate death tolls, he said.
Captain Plunkett is on convalescent leave for post-traumatic stress suffered during his Timor mission, which involved examining mass graves. He said his decision to talk was also influenced by his belief that an international war crimes tribunal was needed to investigate East Timor atrocities.
Leaks to the media have revealed that Australian intelligence agencies were aware of the extent of Indonesian military involvement in orchestrating the 1999 violence.
But Mr Plunkett's allegations, and other revelations on Dateline, are the first direct accounts from intelligence insiders and the first accounts of prior knowledge of a specific mass killing .
Captain Plunkett arrived in East Timor with the first INTERFET soldiers in late 1999, serving until February, 2000. He said that before the referendum he had seen accurate reports from the Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation, "none of which were being passed on to the UN on the ground".
On the Maliana killings, Captain Plunkett said Australian sources had accurately reported on Indonesian plans to kill independence supporters in Maliana, but their reports were "pushed up the chain of command, hosed down and politically wordsmithed by the Asia division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade".
He said the information was "held" at the department instead of being passed to UN observers in Maliana who could have warned the population. Captain Plunkett said the reports held by the Australian Government had come from "human intelligence" sources in Maliana.
One of these sources was Wayne Sievers, at the time an Australian Federal Police officer serving with an unarmed UN force. Mr Sievers told Dateline that two of his reports on developments in Maliana were sent to the UN before the referendum, but officials and Australian diplomats ignored them.
Mr Sievers said he reported on plans by Indonesian officers and militia leaders to kill independence supporters in Maliana, predicting how and when the killings would take place. He said he also sent his reports to a friend in the Australian defence intelligence community.
Captain Plunkett said the UN subsequently told people in Maliana that if violence erupted they should go to the police station, where Indonesian police would protect them.
Instead of finding the sanctuary they sought, several thousand people were trapped in the police grounds. According to survivors, on September 8, 1999, the area was surrounded by militiamen, with Indonesian police and soldiers forming a ring behind them. The militias hacked independence supporters to death with machetes in front of the assembled crowd. About 47 people were killed.
He said Australian troops were aware that many victims of various acts of violence had probably been dumped at sea or in rivers, but estimates of these could not be included in body counts.
He said that as a result the official body count registered for post-election violence in Maliana was about 12, whereas as an intelligence officer he had evidence of more than 60 bodies in Maliana town and the surrounding area.