Jakarta – Indonesia on Thursday will begin trying suspects over human rights abuses in East Timor in 1999, when the territory voted to break from Jakarta's rule. Following are details on the suspects, the process and also trials taking place in East Timor that relate to the bloodshed:

Suspects:

Eighteen suspects will stand trial including military officers, civilians and members of pro-Jakarta militias, who were responsible for much of the violence and destruction of East Timor. Officials in 2000 had named 19 but one has since died.

The highest-ranking armed forces suspects are: former regional military commander Major-General Adam Damiri, former East Timor military commander Brigadier-General Tono Suratman and ex-East Timor police chief Brigadier-General Timbul Silaen.

Others include the last Jakarta-appointed governor Abilio Soares as well as mostly middle-ranking military officers.

Prominent pro-Jakarta militia leader Eurico Guterres was later named a suspect. He was sentenced one year ago to six months in prison for inciting violence in West Timor.

Who is not in the dock:

Wiranto, Indonesia's military chief at the time. In early 2000, a commission of inquiry set up to probe the carnage linked him to the violence and included him in a list of 33 names submitted to the Attorney-General's office for investigation. Wiranto has denied any wrongdoing.

Zacky Anwar Makarim, head of military intelligence when East Timor voted. The commission said he should also have been probed. He has been quoted in local media as denying there was a systematic campaign of terror and destruction in East Timor. Also absent are some key pro-Jakarta militia leaders.

The law and courts:

The trials will be the first cases using Indonesia's landmark law on Human Rights Courts, issued in 2000, which for the first time makes top military officers liable to civilian prosecution for gross human rights violations, including genocide.

However, the law does not recognise crimes committed before it was enacted, a move which enraged human rights groups.

To get around that, the law allows parliament to propose the setting up of ad hoc courts to cover pre-2000 cases. So far, parliament has recommended ad hoc courts for two cases, the East Timor violence in 1999 and the killing of scores of Muslim worshippers at Jakarta's Tanjung Priok port in 1984.

Such recommendations require a presidential decree to give the courts legal status. The government then selects judges and decides which particular events to focus the prosecution on.

The law provides for a witness and victim protection programme, although this has yet to be set up, raising concerns witnesses, especially those in East Timor, would be afraid to testify. Court officials have said they had no immediate plan to call witnesses from the territory.

The presidential decree covering the Timor trials only allows for violence committed in April and September 1999 to be subject to trial. Amnesty International has said that excludes hundreds of other cases of serious crimes during the independence process.

Indonesia has no actual human rights court complex. All ad hoc trials will take place at the Central Jakarta District Court. Suspects will be tried separately over five incidents that occurred in three districts in East Timor before and after the vote. These include massacres at two churches.

Judges are a mix of career and non-career. Those who are not professional judges have been chosen from academia in an effort to ensure impartiality. None of Indonesia's best known human rights lawyers, who are also academics, have been selected.

Trials in East Timor:

As the legal process in Jakarta finally gets under way, East Timor has already handed out jail terms as part of its own probes into what happened during the 1999 violence. An East Timor court in December sentenced 10 pro-Jakarta militiamen to jail for crimes against humanity in 1999.

The Special Panel of Serious Crimes in Dili, set up in June last year, can try cases of genocide, war crimes and other serious offences committed from January 1 and October 25, 1999.

Separately, the Dili Appeals Court last month issued an international warrant for the arrest of militia leader Guterres and 16 others, including members of the Indonesian military. They were all charged with crimes against humanity. Jakarta has said it would not hand over the men.