Militia leader charged with murder, torture
Sydney Morning Herald 5 February 2003
By Jill Jolliffe in Dili
United Nations investigators have indicted ageing militia chieftain Joao
Tavares and two senior Indonesian officers for crimes against humanity
committed in the Maliana district of East Timor in 1999.
In a 34-page document filed with Dili court yesterday the 72-year-old
militia leader is described as having ordered the killings and torture
of
independence supporters between March and September 1999.
He is specifically charged with five counts of murder as a crime against
humanity, two counts of torture and one of forcible transfer of civilian
population.
Under UN regulations in force, each charge carries a maximum of 25 years
imprisonment.
The deputy prosecutor, Siri Frigaard, who signed the indictment, has
requested Indonesian and Interpol arrest warrants for those accused.
The indictment says that on April 12, 1999, Joao Tavares accompanied
Indonesian commander Colonel Burhanuddin Siagian to a site near Maliana
where his soldiers and Timorese militiamen were torturing five independence
supporters.
He was alleged to have pointed to the victims, saying: "These are
the
people that receive money from the Government, and they feed the Falintil
[guerillas]. These people we have to kill." Three of the five were
shot
soon after.
Colonel Siagian is charged along with his deputy, Lieutenant Try Sutrisno.
He recently accompanied President Megawati Soekarnoputri on a tour of
the
Bali bomb sites.
He faces six charges of murder as a crime against humanity, four of
torture, one of persecution and another of imprisonment. Sutrisno faces
similar charges.
The Maliana district was one of the worst hit areas during Indonesia's
scorched earth withdrawal from East Timor, and this is the first of several
indictments covering crimes committed there.
Tavares is one of East Timor's longest-serving militia leaders whose
1999
collaboration with the Indonesian army followed his 1975 support for
Indonesia's invasion of the territory.
He accompanied troops in the attack on Balibo in which five
Australian-based journalists were killed and is reported to have looted
a
watch from one of the bodies.
But while other former militia men refused Indonesian cajoling to lead
new
violence, Tavares was in the forefront again, despite his advanced years,
and has even been named in recent weeks as a possible sponsor of recent
militia incursions into East Timor.