Jakarta – Indonesia's Supreme Court has upheld the acquittal of a former police officer charged with gross human rights violations in connection with two massacres in East Timor in 1999, an official said today.

Three judges from a five-man panel yesterday rejected a prosecution appeal against the acquittal of former Dili district police chief Hulman Gultom, an official with the Supreme Court's criminal appeal unit said. "The ruling was issued on Wednesday, but a copy of it has not yet been sent to prosecutors of the case," the official said.

Militia gangs, which the United Nations has said were recruited and directed by Indonesia's military, went on an arson and killing spree before and after the East Timorese voted for independence in a UN-sponsored August 1999 ballot.

They killed about 1400 independence supporters and laid waste to much of the infrastructure in the half-island, which was a Portuguese colony before Indonesia annexed and invaded it in the mid-1970s.

Indonesia's human rights court in 2003 sentenced Mr Gultom to three years in jail for failing to stop two attacks by Jakarta-backed militias in Dili in April and September 1999 and failing to stop his subordinates joining in the assaults.