Craig Skehan – Australian Federal Police are investigating the leaking of classified material showing that high-level Indonesian officials were involved in orchestrating the wave of violence linked to East Timor's independence ballot in 1999.
The Defence Minister, Robert Hill, confirmed the police investigation in Parliament yesterday.
The Herald carried a detailed account yesterday of classified intercepts from the Defence Signals Directorate, including messages between Indonesian officers who co-ordinated the campaign of terror.
The Opposition Defence spokesman, Chris Evans, asked Senator Hill in Parliament yesterday if he could confirm that the Australian Government knew before the vote for independence on August 30, 1999, that senior Indonesian generals were behind the violence. He asked what steps the Government had taken, on receiving the directorate's information, to protect the East Timorese people. Senator Hill said information "based" on intelligence reports had been given to special UN investigators.
Challenged on whether the Government had failed to use the intelligence material to protect the East Timorese from organised violence, Senator Hill said: "I am not in a position to confirm particular reports. If reports existed, I would not be in a position to advise how they were utilised."
A spokesman for the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said last night that no "raw" intelligence material from the directorate had been passed to the UN officials assigned to investigate the violence. However, he said "information based on classified intelligence" had been passed to them and to "responsible authorities" in the Indonesian Government.
Mr Downer's spokesman said Australia also had given the UN all military police reports of investigations into crimes in East Timor at the time. The UN investigators had appreciated the help, and consideration would be given to specific requests for more information. However, he could not say if this would include original directorate, or other intelligence, documents.
The Opposition foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, said yesterday that, as late as November, 1999, Mr Downer had insisted that only "rogue elements" in the Indonesian military were involved in the violence.
He cited the leaked directorate material showing that the Government had intelligence from as early as February, 1999, linking Indonesian generals and a minister to atrocities. He said a failure to now hand over all relevant intelligence material to the UN would ensure the criminals went free.
An Opposition MP, Laurie Brereton, who is Labor's former foreign affairs spokesman, said in a statement that the Herald report on the leaked documents confirmed "that Foreign Minister Downer consistently failed to speak the truth about events in East Timor over the course of 1999".