Sydney Morning Herald
March 14, 2002
Australia's bloody East Timor secret
Spy intercepts confirm Government knew of Jakarta's hand in massacres
By Hamish McDonald, International Editor
The Australian Government sat on explosive intelligence material which
showed the direct involvement of senior Indonesian army generals in the
violence which swept East Timor in 1999.
Defence sources in Canberra have given details of how Australian electronic
eavesdroppers intercepted secret messages between the Indonesian officers
who ran a campaign of fear to deter the East Timorese from voting for
independence.
But virtually none of the collected evidence, which could be vital to
finding the masterminds responsible for crimes against humanity, has been
shared with United Nations investigators.
This is because of concerns that Indonesia would adopt countermeasures
to
foil future interception operations by the Defence Signals Directorate.
Transcripts of the DSD intercepts revealed to the Herald show a covert
chain
of command down from the then President B.J. Habibie's co-ordinating
minister for politics and security, General Feisal Tanjung, to army generals
and colonels on the ground in East Timor.
It provides evidence for the first time that Tanjung, a career special
forces and paratroop officer, used a network of similar minded officers
in a
campaign to avert a vote for independence in the United Nations-supervised
ballot on August 30, 1999.
When this failed to their enormous surprise, a DSD intercept shows the
officers then organised the forced deportation of one third of East Timor's
population and the destruction of infrastructure, with the assistance
of two
other ministers in Habibie's cabinet the former generals A.M. Hendropriyono
and Mohammad Yunus Yosfiah.
Three Indonesian army and police generals who were in charge of security
for
East Timor in 1999 are among 18 suspects whose trials begin in Jakarta
today
over four militia rampages in Liquica, Dili and Suai. But the generals
who
planned and directed the militia operation appear likely to escape
indictment.
The leak of highly classified intelligence material is the first time
raw
DSD intercepts relating to a contemporary event have been disclosed. It
reflects deep disquiet in defence circles that Canberra at first downplayed
the high-level Indonesian military involvement with the militias blaming
it
on "rogue elements" and since then has not used it to help war
crimes
investigations.
Intercepts in February 1999 show Jakarta had sent detachments of special
forces, code-named Tribuana and Venus, to begin black operations in East
Timor, and that a commander based in Bali, Major-General Mahidin Simbolon,
was referring to a militia group as "his crew".
As the militia campaign geared up with massacres of independence supporters
in April, the DSD picked up conversations in which the East Timor army
commander, Colonel Tono Suratman, is supervising the notorious militia
leader Eurico Guterres.
Other messages include the allocation of radio frequencies by the Indonesian
military command in Jakarta to militia groups, and a general in Jakarta's
military intelligence agency organising T-shirts for demonstrations against
the United Nations mission supervising the ballot.
The intercepts show the key officer running the militia in East Timor,
Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim, was ready to assassinate Guterres if
he
changed sides after the vote.
One intercept indicates that just after the arrival on September 20 of
the
international security force led by Australia's Major-General Peter
Cosgrove, the covert campaign chiefs had sent in hit squads of special
forces troops, code-named Kiper-9, to target independence leaders and
turncoats from the pro-Indonesian cause.
The unfinished story of accountability in East Timor hangs over moves
by the
United States and Australia to improve contacts with Indonesian military
and
security agencies to pursue their campaign against terrorism.
The retired general Hendropriyono, who as transmigration minister in
1999
helped set up the camps into which East Timorese deportees were driven,
was
recently made head of Indonesia's National Intelligence Body.
On his visit to Jakarta last month, the Prime Minister, John Howard,
accepted an Indonesian proposal to step up intelligence exchanges with
this
agency.
------------------------------------------
Sydney Morning Herald & The Age
March 14, 2002
Silence over a crime against humanity
International Editor Hamish McDonald reveals the critical evidence
Australia's spy chiefs have kept hidden, as trials begin in Jakarta today
over violence during East Timor's independence vote.
The evidence is contained in the most tightly held archive in Canberra:
the
electronic data base of the Defence Signals Direct-orate (DSD), the result
of months intercepting secret communications between Indonesian officers
involved in a shadowy campaign to thwart East Timorese hopes of independence
in 1999.
Some details of this vast intelligence record have been revealed for
the
first time to the Herald by senior defence community sources in Canberra.
They are dismayed at a huge crime against humanity, committed on Australia's
doorstep and under the eyes of the United Nations, remaining unexposed.
The DSD intercepts map out the chain of command, from the local militias
and
covert Indonesian forces in East Timor up to one of the most feared military
men in Jakarta, General Feisal Tanjung, whose involvement has so far escaped
mention in human rights investigations.
The defence sources also say that some of this critical intelligence
in the
first half of 1999, pointing to high-level Indonesian involvement, was
not
included in intelligence exchanged with United States' agencies at a time
when the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was blaming the militia
violence on "rogue elements" in the Indonesian army.
The tensions this caused between Canberra's Defence Intelligence
Organisation and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) have
been seen as contributing to the June 1999 suicide of the DIO liaison
officer in Washington, Lieutenant-Colonel Merv Jenkins, after he was
questioned by DFAT security officials about "Australian Eyes Only"
material
shared with American counterparts.
The intercepts, contained in files classified as "Secret Spoke"
(meaning
derived from intercepted clear-voice telephone calls) or "Top Secret
Umbra"
(derived from encrypted or scrambled voice communications), have not been
shared with UN or other investigators.
But they include details of command and communications hierarchies that
would provide vital evidence for international-standard war crimes
tribunals, such as those prosecutions being mounted in The Hague against
politicians and generals in the former Yugoslavia.
Instead of setting up such a tribunal for East Timor, the UN has stood
back
for 21/2 years to let Jakarta fulfil its promise to mount its own trials
of
those responsible for the 1999 massacres, abductions, coerced population
movements and destruction.
In Jakarta, the first trial is due to begin today, with former East Timor
governor Abilio Soares and former provincial police chief Brigadier-General
Timbul Silaen accused of crimes against humanity involving widespread
attacks on civilians.
Silaen is one of three generals among the 18 military personnel and civilian
militia leaders accused of participation or responsibility in some of
the
more large-scale acts of murder in 1999. The other two are Major-General
Adam Damiri, former head of the Udayana regional command, which included
East Timor, and Brigadier-General Tono Suratman, who was East Timor military
commander for much of 1999.
To the extent they face substantial punishment the three still seem to
be in
the pipeline for promotion within the army and police these generals and
a
number of colonels and junior officers appear to be the sacrifices to
appease foreign and local concerns.
The senior generals who were more closely supervising the militia campaign
on the ground in East Timor, and who reported directly to top military
figures in Jakarta, have been left off the list of accused, although some
were named as suspects in Indonesia's special human rights commission
report
in February 2000.
So far, it appears the Indonesian legal process, while concentrating
on
specific incidents of terror, has not attempted to lay overall blame for
the
militia campaign ahead of the August 30, 1999, vote, or for the systematic
drive after the result was announced to deport the population and lay
waste
to the territory.
The Indonesian armed forces commander and defence minister at the time,
General Wiranto, was forced to resign from his later cabinet post as
co-ordinating political and security minister after the February 2000
report
said he carried moral responsibility for the violence, given that Indonesia
had guaranteed security for East Timor's referendum.
But now Wiranto also appears to be a fall guy, in terms of political,
if not
legal, responsibility. In all the inquiries so far, little attention has
been given to the role of Feisal Tanjung, Wiranto's predecessor as armed
forces commander then as political-security minister, whose pivotal role
in
instigating, planning and executing the militia campaign is brought into
focus by the DSD intercepts.
Normally, the political-security position in the Indonesian cabinet has
little executive responsibility or clout within the Indonesia military,
compared with that of the commander. But the weighting of the two roles
seems to have been reversed in 1999 because of the personalities and records
of the officers involved.
Wiranto was a sociable some say weak political general who had risen
to
senior ranks through his positions in the entourage of former president
Soeharto, who had been forced out of office by popular protest in May
1998.
Throughout 1999 he kept an eye out for his prospects in Jakarta as political
parties courted the powerful military following general elections in June.
TOUGH-minded Feisal Tanjung had spent much of his career in the feared
Special Forces, known as Kopassus, or the paratroop units of the Strategic
Reserve. He had associations with operations in East Timor from the earliest
occupation days in 1975.
Tanjung appears to have operated a chain of command parallel to that
wielded
by General Wiranto, using officers with Kopassus and East Timor backgrounds,
especially the two major-generals Zacky Anwar Makarim and Sjafrie Sjamsuddin
assigned as "liaison officers" to the UN mission running the
ballot in East
Timor.
Most of these officers were, like Tanjung, associated with the "Green"
or
conspicuously Islamic faction active in the Indonesian forces in the last
years of the Soeharto era. Wiranto and key aides like then
lieutenant-general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono belonged to the "Red
and White"
or more secular nationalist faction (the name derived from Indonesia's
national flag).
Because of his political ambitions, Wiranto may have been happy to distance
himself from the dirty work involved in keeping East Timor within Indonesia.
His colleagues may have been equally content to preserve his political
acceptability in order to maintain the military's privileged position.
This
meant the crescendo of protests made to Wiranto by Canberra and other
foreign capitals about the obvious military collusion with the militias
went
to the wrong address. Equally, Wiranto's promises of fair behaviour by
the
security forces carried little weight.
According to the Defence sources, the Indonesian embassy in Canberra
was
also out of the loop. DSD intercepted several queries by the then defence
attache in Canberra, Brigadier-General Judi Magio Yusuf, to his Jakarta
superiors asking for clarification of atrocities being reported from East
Timor. He was routinely told these were foreign press fabrications and
to
ignore them.
Nine specific intercepts detailed by the Defence sources, plus accounts
of
other patterns of command and consultation at critical points in 1999,
reveal some of the key officers and strategies in the covert campaign
to
retain East Timor.
On February 9 less than a fortnight after then president Habibie's
announcement that the East Timorese would have an early choice between
wider
autonomy within Indonesia or independence DSD intercepted messages
confirming that two Indonesian special forces units, codenamed Tribuana
and
Venus, had arrived in East Timor to join undercover operations.
The East Timor military command, abbreviated to Korem 164, had already
been
using armed local auxiliaries and militias since the latter months of
1998
to counter the popular unrest that had been growing since Soeharto's fall.
On February 14, DSD heard the Dili militia leader Eurico Guterres telephone
the Tribuana unit about the condition of an injured member of the militia
group, which was called Mahidi. Tribuana told Guterres: "We know
that
Brig-Gen Simbolon is concerned that one of his crew is injured."
This refers to then Brigadier-General Mahidin Simbolon, who was chief
of
staff in the Bali-based Udayana regional command, which included East
Timor.
A former East Timor commander, Simbolon was close to the Mahidi leader
Cancio de Cavalho, whose coined name for the group (Mahidi, from the
Indonesian words meaning "Live or Die for Integration") was
a tribute to the
Indonesian officer.
On May 5, Indonesia's commander in East Timor, then Colonel Tono Suratman,
was intercepted phoning Guterres to ask where he was massing his militia
group for a show of force in Dili, the territory's capital. Guterres
reported 400 militias waiting outside a city hotel.
On June 1, DSD intercepted Colonel Suratman telling Guterres: "Don't
deal
with me directly. Contact me via Bambang [referring to Major Bambang
Wisnumurti, the intelligence chief in Suratman's command]."
On August 8, DSD intercepted a message from military headquarters in
Jakarta, allocating radio frequencies for use by pro-Indonesian groups.
This
was one of a series of frequency allocations that were intercepted routine
signals but the kind that provide crucial pieces of evidence for war crimes
prosecutors. The point of contact for the militia groups was another
intelligence officer, a Lieutenant Masbuku, in Suratman's Korem 164
headquarters in Dili.
On August 9, a message stated that Director "A" in Jakarta's
military
intelligence agency BAIS, a Brigadier-General Arifuddin, had organised
flags
and other material for a demonstration against Unamet, the UN mission.
Arifuddin said 5000 T-shirts had been prepared, and 10,000 ordered.
In intercepts in a file dated September 4, and classified "Top Secret
Umbra", Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim is making last minute calls
to
find out how the count of the votes from five days earlier is going (the
result, a 78.5 per cent majority for independence, was later announced
by
the UN that morning).
Anwar spoke to a police officer named Andreas and asked how the count
was
going. The police officer said that with 50 per cent of the vote counted,
only about 20 per cent seemed to be for the autonomy-within-Indonesia
option. Anwar appeared incredulous, asking: "Are you sure? How can
it be?"
He pointed out that all across East Timor, households had been displaying
the red and white Indonesian flag.
Anwar also spoke to Brigadier-General Glenny Kairupan, head of another
special team appointed by General Feisal Tanjung, for pointers to the
impending result, and to the East Timorese activist leading Jakarta's
political campaign in the ballot, Basilio Araujo who said it was obvious
the
poll was fixed.
While speaking to Araujo, General Anwar also asked him to keep a close
eye
on Eurico Guterres. Anwar said Guterres had a relative who was a Catholic
nun, and might easily be persuaded to jump to the independence side. "I'll
take care of him if he goes over to the other side," Anwar said.
ONCE the ballot's result was announced on September 4, the Indonesian
authorities on the ground moved quickly to adapt existing contingency
plans
for evacuation of pro-integration elements and Indonesian residents.
Across the central and western parts of East Timor, people were driven
from
their homes and shepherded to land or sea transport to West Timor or other
parts of Indonesia. The aim, apparently, was to discredit the UN ballot
as
rigged, by suggesting that a majority of Timorese were voting with their
feet in accordance with their true wishes, or to create conditions for
partition of the territory. Over the grim two weeks this scheme was carried
out, before the arrival of the Australian-led international force Interfet
on September 20, DSD picked up numerous scrambled telephone conversations
between General Tanjung in Jakarta and General Anwar in Timor discussing
details, the Defence sources say.
In addition, DSD intercepted other discussions about the population transfer
involving General Anwar and two ministers in the Habibie government, both
with intelligence and special forces backgrounds. One was Lieutenant-General
A.M.Hendropriyono, the minister for the former inter-island "transmigration"
scheme, the other Lieutenant-General Yunus Yosfiah, the information
minister.
On September 21, as Interfet was still landing troops in Dili and
establishing an uneasy interregnum with Indonesian forces, DSD intercepted
a
phone call to the veteran pro-Indonesian political leader Francisco Xavier
Lopez da Cruz, informing him that Kopassus had formed special hit-squads
code-named "Kiper-9" to hunt down pro-independence elements
and
pro-Indonesian figures who changed sides.
A final intercept revealed by the sources, reported on October 5, details
a
message from the East Nusatenggara provincial police commander to the
police
chief in the provincial capital Kupang (in West Timor). The local police
chief is reminded that some visitors from the US State Department are
about
to visit camps holding relocated East Timorese. He is to make sure the
visitors get the impression the refugees are free of harassment.
The generals who figure in the command chain of this campaign aside from
Damiri, Suratman and Silaen are all free of legal charge. Feisal Tanjung
is
active in party politics since losing ministerial office with the end
of the
Habibie presidency in October 1999, along with former information minister
Yunus Yosfiah. Damiri's former chief of staff in the Udayana command,
Mahidin Simbolon, has been promoted to his own command, in Papua, where
local independence activists fear he could pursue a militia strategy against
them, and where Kopassus soldiers are suspected of murdering the Papuan
Council leader Theys Eluay.
Zacky Anwar Makarim remains in the army, attached to the TNI headquarters
without specific assignment. Sjafrie Sjamsuddin, who is among army officers
resisting legal summonses to testify on violence against students in early
1998 (when he was Jakarta garrison chief), has been appointed official
TNI
spokesman.
The former transmigration minister who helped organise the mass deportations
in September 1999, General Hendropriyono, has had a revived career, being
made head of the new National Intelligence Body created by President
Megawati Sukarnoputri, whom he had cultivated in her opposition years
against Soeharto.
Only the decades of impunity enjoyed by the Indonesian security forces
make
the country's leadership unabashed by the irony that Hendropriyono and
Sjamsuddin are now the public faces of a TNI and intelligence service
being
asked to join the War against Terror.