The only Indonesian jailed for abuses during East Timor's violence-marred independence vote has been cleared on appeal in a move that has angered rights groups and embarrassed the Jakarta government.
Abilio Soares, the last Indonesian governor of East Timor who was jailed for three years in July, could be released Friday following a Supreme Court ruling acquitting him of crimes against humanity during the UN-backed referendum.
The court said that because East Timor was under military rule at the time of the bloodshed, the civilian governor was not responsible, spokesman Joko Upoyo told AFP.
Some 18 people were sentenced by an Indonesian tribunal to probe the violence surrounding the August 1999 vote in which at least 1,400 people died as troops and pro-Jakarta militias waged a savage intimidation campaign.
But all have now had their convictions quashed, meaning that no senior Indonesian officials, military or police have been convicted. Only Eurico Guterres, a notorious East Timor militiaman, faces jail pending an appeal.
Rights groups say the tribunal was a sham set up to deflect calls for an international probe into the carnage during which whole towns were razed to the ground as the country voted overwhelmingly to separate from Jakarta.
Last month, outgoing US ambassador Ralph Boyce said Jakarta's failure to make its soldiers accountable for abuses was a missed chance to revive military ties with Washington. US and EU condemnations said the trials were flawed.
Although the latest ruling was made independently of newly-elected President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a top military officer at the time of the Timor vote, it will reflect poorly on pledges to clean up the country's judicial system.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda said Soares' acquittal would fuel international criticism on Indonesia's efforts to prosecute East Timor human rights cases.
"I think that this decision ... will boost arguments by parties who have been doubting the credibility of the judiciary in Indonesia," Wirayuda said.
Soares, an ethnic East Timorese, has said he has been made a scapegoat for police and the military.
But Bonar Tigor Naipospos of the Solidarity Without Borders human rights group said that the former governor as guilty as the security officers, and that judges had "overlooked" abuses under Soares before the military took over.
"For example, he was still the territory's governor during a bloody attack by militias on the house of pro-independence figure Manuel Carrascalao in April 1999," he told AFP. More than 100 refugees were sheltering when the attack took place, in which 12 people including Carrascalao's son died.
Naipospos also said that judges for the other Timor rights abuse cases should view the Timor mayhem as a "collective responsibility" shared by Soares and his fellow former government officials.
"All of those cases are linked one and another and what the judges should have done was to find the ties that bind them all together," he said. East Timor, which won full autonomy in 2002, has downplayed the importance of the trials, insisting that forging good ties with Indonesia is a greater priority.
Indonesia invaded the half-island nation in December 1975, shortly after Dili declared independence from centuries of Portuguese colonial rule.