UN News Centre:
East Timor: UN disappointed with 'light' sentence for peacekeeper's killer
7 March - The head of the United Nations Transitional Administration
in
East Timor (UNTAET) today expressed his disappointment with a six-year
sentence handed down by an Indonesian court to a militiaman convicted
of
murdering a UN peacekeeper.
Prosecutors had sought a 12-year sentence for Jacobus Bere, one of four
suspects charged in the killing of New Zealand Pvt. Leonard Manning, who
was tracking a group of armed militia on 24 July 2000 in Suai District,
near the border of West Timor, Indonesia.
"The prosecution had asked for a 12-year sentence, and the verdict
was half
of that, so I can only be disappointed with this light sentence,"
said
Sergio Vieira de Mello, who is also UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's
Special Representative for East Timor.
"The killing of a United Nations peacekeeper in cold blood should
be
considered a crime of severe gravity, and the sentence should reflect
that," he said. "We hope there will be an appeal which would
result in the
full sentence sought by the prosecution."