Keith Moor – Victorian officers attached to the United Nations found the graves of 24 massacre victims and will this month start exhuming the bodies.
They have identified the senior militia members responsible for torturing and killing the pro-independence Timorese villagers.
The Herald Sun this month visited East Timor and spoke to Australian Federal Police and Victoria Police members seconded to the UN peacekeeping force there.
Det Sen-Sgt Neale Fursdon, normally based in Wangaratta, is leading the investigation into the massacre of 24 independence supporters in Viqueque, 180km south-east of Dili.
Det Sen-Sgt Fursdon has tracked down witnesses who saw many of the men being tortured and hacked to death with machetes. He has evidence strongly suggesting the killers were supported by Indonesian army chiefs.
Det Sen-Sgt Fursdon is preparing a brief of evidence and arrest warrants that UN prosecutors are confident will lead to several militia leaders being convicted of crimes against humanity in East Timor.
UN prosecutor Siri Frigaard believes cases against militia members tried in East Timor are more likely to succeed than the war crimes prosecutions now taking place in Indonesia.
Another crimes-against-humanity case prepared by Australian police and heard in East Timor resulted in those charged being jailed for 33 years in December last year.
This compares with the latest result in a special Indonesian human rights court set up in Jakarta to hear East Timorese war-crimes cases, which last month saw six Indonesian officers acquitted. Five of those officers were accused of involvement in the Suai church massacre of up to 200 people.
Outrage followed the acquittals, with UN human rights chief Mary Robinson condemning them and East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri labelling the Indonesian court a farce.
The Viqueque murders being investigated by Det Sen-Sgt Fursdon are among thousands carried out by Indonesian security forces and anti-independence militias in the carnage after the 1999 vote to end 24 years of Indonesian rule in East Timor.
The UN's serious crimes unit, of which Det Sen-Sgt Fursdon is a member, is investigating the 10 worst massacres.
Mrs Frigaard told the Herald Sun the unit's ultimate goal was to charge senior military figures with the murders, tortures, rapes and other atrocities committed before and after the independence vote in August 1999.
"But we have to be realistic. They are in Indonesia and we are unlikely to be able to get them back to East Timor to be prosecuted," she said.
"But by establishing strong cases against those lower in the hierarchy, and getting convictions, we establish precedence. And if enough international pressure is brought to bear, based on the evidence we gather, then it may be possible one day to charge those at the top."
Mrs Frigaard said the judiciary in East Timor had already demonstrated a willingness to hand out severe sentences for crimes against humanity.