Indonesia's Supreme Court has upheld a three-year prison sentence handed to a former East Timor governor for crimes against humanity during the territory's bloody breakaway from Jakarta in 1999.

"We have not officially received the copy of the ruling but we have been informed that it has been issued and that the three-year jail sentence is upheld," said Juan Felix Tampubolon, a lawyer for ex-governor Jose Osorio Abilio Soares. Soares, an ethnic East Timorese, complained when he was sentenced in August 2002 that he had been made a scapegoat for the military-backed militia violence against independence supporters.

He was the first of 18 defendants to receive a verdict from an Indonesian human rights court, which ended up acquitting 11 security force members and one civilian.

Apart from Soares, three army officers, a former Dili police chief and a militia leader were ordered jailed but stayed free pending appeals. Rights groups described the court as largely a sham.

Tampubolon said lawyers would file a demand for a case review on behalf of Soares, who has not yet been jailed. He described the proceedings of the rights court as "in a simple word, senseless." The Supreme Court's director for crimes, Mugihardjo, confirmed the ruling on Soares but declined further comment. He could not say when the court would rule on other appellants.

Human rights lawyer Hendardi also rapped the Soares' ruling, saying it showed the trials were held just to appease the international community. The Supreme Court has rejected appeals by prosecutors against the acquittal of other defendants.

Hendardi was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying many police and military officers remained unpunished. "Justice has not been done for the East Timorese victims who suffered arbitrary torture and death," he said.

Pro-Jakarta local militias, organised and armed by Indonesian soldiers, terrorised independence supporters before and after East Timorese voted in August 1999 to break away from Indonesian rule.

The UN says up to 1,500 civilians were killed and some 70 percent of the country's buildings were destroyed.