Jakarta – Indonesian police said Thursday they had raided a gambling den reportedly owned by former East Timor militia boss Eurico Guterres, who has been convicted of crimes against humanity in his former homeland.

Police raided the pinball parlour in West Jakarta's Tambora district Wednesday night and seized gambling machines, Second Sergeant Bambang told AFP. "I don't know who owns it," he said.

He said several people were arrested. Guterres was in the police station at midday Thursday but Bambang refused to say what he was doing there.

Guterres could not be reached for comment but the Detikcom online news service quoted him as admitting to reporters that he ran the parlour.

He said he was forced to turn to the illegal but phenomenally popular gambling business to support himself while undergoing judicial proceedings related to the East Timor case. However, he insisted he was opposed to gambling.

Guterres remains free while appealing his conviction for crimes against humanity related to East Timor's bloody 1999 split from Indonesia.

He was sentenced to 10 years by a Jakarta human rights court but a prosecutor announced last Friday that the sentence had been slashed to five years on appeal.

Guterres headed the Aitarak or Thorn militia which terrorized residents of the East Timor capital, Dili, ahead of a 1999 UN-backed referendum on independence.

Aitarak and other militias, along with the Indonesian military which created and armed them, killed at least 1,400 people in East Timor as part of widespread campaign of destruction, the United Nations says.

East Timor has been independent since May 2002, following a period of UN stewardship.