Stephen Fitzpatrick – The retired Indonesian commando at the centre of the Balibo Five killings says he will refuse to give evidence to an Australian Federal Police investigation into the incident, since he has no authority to do so.
"I have never thought about (giving evidence), because at the time I was on duty... I was a soldier, so what I did or didn't do at the time was the responsibility of headquarters; they're the ones with the authority to answer such inquiries," Colonel Gatot Purwanto said.
Colonel Purwanto, 62, says the five Australian-based journalists who died in East Timor in 1975 were deliberately killed by Indonesian special forces troops, contradicting the official Jakarta line that they died in crossfire.
His admission follows the AFP's announcement in September that it has begun a formal, criminal investigation into the deaths of the Balibo Five.
Colonel Purwanto says the members of "Team Susi", the advance commando guard sent to the small town of Balibo about dawn on October 16, 1975, knew the five men were journalists because of their camera equipment.
However, he claims the killings, while deliberate, were not on Jakarta's orders.
Indeed, he insists that the man identified by NSW Deputy Coroner Dorelle Pinch as having played a key role in the deaths, now retired information minister Yunus Yosfiah, caused anger among his superiors for the way the men were killed.
Colonel Purwanto said the members of Team Susi opened fire on the house where the Balibo Five were sheltering and filming the invasion, after hearing gunfire coming from its direction.
Colonel Purwanto's evidence contradicts that given in the NSW coroner's court, that one of the five was killed in the town square trying to surrender to the Indonesians, and another was stabbed in the back after trying to escape the commandos.
However, Colonel Purwanto's new evidence includes the line that "on the battlefield, if someone is not your ally, then he could be someone who will kill you, so in that case you must kill him first".
He also said the only acceptable military outcome was to kill the five journalists and destroy their bodies in order to prevent them reporting the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.
Indonesian military spokesman Air Vice-Marshal Sagom Tamboen said Colonel Purwanto was unlikely to face sanctions for revealing military secrets, although his version of events was "counter-productive with our stance but we will just treat it as a source of knowledge to us".