Dili – East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta said Wednesday he had slashed the seven-year jail sentence handed out to a former minister for distributing weapons during violent unrest in 2006.

Ramos-Horta said the sentence against former home affairs minister Rogerio Lobato was cut 75% in a show of mercy as part of the country's sixth anniversary of independence this week.

"It is three-fourths," he told AFP when asked the size of the reduction. He added that he didn't know how much more time Lobato would spend in jail because the courts had yet to review the sentence.

"My consideration for him and other cases are humanitarian, their health or family situation. Mr. Rogerio Lobato's health has been precarious for some time."

Lobato was jailed on five charges of arming hit squads during the 2006 unrest in the country, when fighting between factions of the security forces left 37 dead and made 150,000 flee their homes.

But Ramos-Horta said he didn't think Lobato was an instigator of the violence. "I sincerely believe that Rogerio Lobato is a decent man who was caught in the crisis of 2006 and he definitely wasn't one of the authors of the crisis," he said.

Lobato received a court permit to travel abroad for treatment last year. He has liver, heart and kidney problems but the exact nature of the care he is receiving in Malaysia is unknown.

He is a senior member of the opposition Fretilin party and founded a guerrilla army that fought Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor, which lasted until 1999. East Timor formally became an independent state in 2002.