Hamish McDonald – Indonesian special forces knew five Australian newsmen were in Balibo before they attacked the East Timor village 31 years ago, and intended to kill them, a Sydney court heard yesterday.

In October 1975 Fernando Mariz was a young Timorese conscripted by the Indonesian forces at their headquarters at Batugade, just inside the then Portuguese colony, mostly controlled by the pro-independence Fretilin movement after a brief civil war. Two or three days before the October 16 attack he and other Timorese were listening to Radio Maubere, the public broadcast station taken over by Fretilin in the colony's capital, Dili.

The radio said five Australian journalists were at Balibo, on a hilltop overlooking the Indonesian foothold, to film Indonesian military activity and Indonesian warships firing from nearby waters.

Mr Mariz told the State Coroner's Court that he had told his Indonesian unit commander, known as "Major Leo" about them. "Don't worry, we know already that they are there," Major Leo had replied. "We have good medicine for them."

The Timorese said he had understood from this that the Indonesians intended the journalists to be killed. "We know the mentality of these people," he said, referring to the Indonesian forces he met in the fighting.

An inquest before Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch is investigating the deaths of the "Balibo Five" newsmen – the Australians Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart, the Britons Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, and the New Zealander Gary Cunningham – in particular that of Peters, the only NSW resident.

Yesterday another Timorese auxiliary, codenamed M. 4 to protect his identity, said he had travelled to Balibo from Batugade soon after the attack and had been told by other partisans how the journalists died. They had come out from a house with their hands up, and been taken to the Indonesian chief of the attacking forces. According to these accounts, the officer shouted at them: "You are communists!" before they were killed.