Hamish McDonald – Families of the five newsmen killed at Balibo, East Timor, in 1975 have told a Sydney inquest they were tricked by Australian officials into agreeing to the burial of the purported remains in Jakarta.

Three of the families said each had been told separately by Department of Foreign Affairs officials that the other families did not want the remains brought back to Australia.

Shirley Shackleton – the widow of Greg Shackleton, a reporter for Channel Seven, who died in an Indonesian covert attack on October 16, 1975 – said an official told her "it would cost you $48,000" to transport the remains home.

John Stratton, SC, counsel for Maureen Tolfree, sister of Brian Peters, a cameraman for Channel Nine, asked the Deputy State Coroner Dorelle Pinch to urge the Federal Government to seek reburial in Australia.

"In view of the history of this matter it is utterly offensive to the families of the deceased journalists that they are buried in Indonesia," Mr Stratton said.

After weeks of requests, Indonesian authorities handed to the Australian embassy in Jakarta in November that year four shoe boxes of ash and charred bone fragments said to have come from the house in Balibo where four of the newsmen died. The embassy conducted a burial in a Jakarta cemetery on December 5, 1975, without the bereaved families.

In his closing submission on the inquest's last day of hearings, Mr Stratton said the official history of what happened to the Balibo five had been based on "a false account of history". "It has been in the interests of certain people, both in Indonesia and Australia, to maintain the false history."

Ms Pinch now retires to review submissions that include recommendations she refer the names of two former Indonesian army officers to prosecutors for possible war crime charges.