Indonesian human rights court due by Dec
By Catharine Munro, South-East Asia Correspondent
JAKARTA, Aug 22 AAP - Indonesia would have a human rights court to try
charges of atrocities in East Timor by December despite difficulties in
finding judges, a senior judge said today.
"I'm sure that at the end of this year the court will be operating,"
Supreme Court Judge Benjamin Mangkudilaga said in an interview with AAP.
Mangkudilaga is the chairman of the committee responsible for setting
up
the long-awaited court.
He replaced Judge Syafiuddin Kartasasmita, who was gunned down in broad
daylight in late July by unknown assassins.
Police claim the son of Indonesia's former dictator Suharto ordered
Syafiuddin's killing but some observers have also suggested it was possible
elements of the military could also be behind the judge's death.
Mangkudilaga said no special arrangements had been made to protect the
personal security of the judges, who will try human rights abuses committed
in East Timor in 1999.
He said 40 serving judges had already been identified to serve on the court.
However, Mangkudilaga said he was having difficulty in recruiting so-called
"ad hoc" judges to the bench, as was required by the law.
Ad hoc judges were legal experts who were not serving as judges, he said.
Mangkudilaga said the difficulty in hiring ad hoc judges lay in the fact
that the law required them to quit their other work while they served
on
the human rights court for five years.
"That's the real problem," he said.
The law which establishes the human rights court requires that two serving
judges and three judges non-serving judges sit on the bench.
Trials against charges of human rights abuses in East Timor would be
heard
in Jakarta, Mangkudilaga said.
The attorney-general's Office has already named 20 suspects, including
officers from the Indonesian military, in connection with human rights
abuses in East Timor.
The Jakarta court would also try suspects in the shooting by the military
of an unknown number of Islamic protesters in Tanjung Priok in Jakarta
in 1984.
East Timor and Tanjung Priok would be the first cases to be heard, he said.
Human rights courts are also being planned for three other Indonesian
cities - Medan, Surabaya and Makassar.