Two international human rights groups questioned Indonesia's determination to bring offenders in East Timor to justice despite its indictment of seven suspects in the murderous army-backed militia attacks on independence supporters in 1999.

Human Rights Watch said the indictments filed Thursday for crimes against humanity are a positive development but serious questions remain. Amnesty International said Friday that "basic measures to ensure that the trials in Indonesia meet international standards of fairness are missing."

Those indicted are the former governor and police chief of the territory, a district official, three army officers from the town of Suai – the scene of a September 1999 church massacre – and the then-Suai police chief. They are due to face trial in a newly established human rights court in Jakarta, along with 11 other named suspects, but no date has been set.

"Unfortunately the government's commitment to justice remains in doubt," said Sidney Jones, Asia director of Human Rights Watch, in a statement. "The judges [for Jakarta's rights court] were poorly chosen, the prosecutors have shown no interest in accountability, the defence is likely to take advantage of an array of legal loopholes – and the suspects haven't even been detained."

The law setting up the "ad hoc" rights court provided for non-career judges to be named. Human Rights Watch said many hoped that candidates with human rights expertise would be appointed. Instead, it said, 12 "obscure academics" were chosen, "some of whom had associations with senior army officers."

The New York-based group also questioned the commitment of Attorney General M,A Rachman, saying that when he was deputy attorney general he was "obstinately unhelpful" to requests for cooperation from United Nations prosecutors in East Timor.

Human Rights Watch said a constitutional amendment passed in August 2000 bans retroactive application of laws. While crimes against humanity were considered exempt from this under international law, "it is not clear that Indonesian jurists will take that view."

The group said the international definition of crimes against humanity was improperly translated and may hinder the conviction of defendants who were not actually present at a massacre.

It criticised Jakarta's decision to restrict the court's mandate to offences in April and in September 1999, saying prosecutors may not be able to examine "the broader patterns of state policy and practice that contributed to the violence."

Amnesty said the law setting up the rights court "allows for political interference, including the role of the executive branch of the government in selecting judges and prosecutors and in deciding which cases can be prosecuted."

It raised concern at Indonesia's failure to establish a witness and victim protection program.

Amnesty said the restriction of the court's mandate to two months in 1999 and to just three districts "excludes hundreds of other cases of unlawful killing, torture, rape and other serious crimes."

It said that if Indonesian trials fail to meet international standards, prosecutions in third countries or an international criminal tribunal must be sought.

In the months surrounding East Timor's vote for independence from Indonesia in August 1999, pro-Jakarta militias backed by the Indonesian military went on a bloody rampage. They killed hundreds of people and burned towns to the ground.

Indonesia is under international pressure to bring offenders to justice. But this week it said it would refuse requests to hand over nine pro-Jakarta militiamen and eight Indonesian soldiers who have been indicted by international prosecutors in East Timor.