(16 Feb 2001) English/Nat
XFA
The trial of ten pro-Indonesian militiamen charged with the murder of church workers and a journalist in September 1999 has opened in East Timor.
The trial is the second case of crimes against humanity to be heard in the Dili district court.
A militiaman was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment last month after pleading guilty to murder.
The accused, all members of the Team Alpha paramilitary gang, are charged with killing 12 people - including three priests and two nuns - near the eastern town of Los Palos.
An eleventh suspect, Indonesian special forces Lt. Syaful Anwar, is still at large in Indonesia.
Anwar is the first Indonesian officer to be indicted for crimes against humanity in East Timor and an international warrant has been issued for his arrest.
The government in Jakarta has refused to extradite him.
As the trial opened, attorney Cancio Xavier argued the case shouldn't continue without the presence of Indonesian military commanders who masterminded the killings.
Following a U-N-sponsored independence referendum in August 1999, pro-Jakarta militiamen backed by the Indonesian army rampaged through East Timor.
Hundreds of civilians died and more than 80 per cent of the country's infrastructure was destroyed.
The ten militiamen are accused of ambushing a van with seven church workers and Indonesian journalist Agus Muliawan on 25 September 1999, five days after the arrival of an international peacekeeping force in East Timor.
Muliawan, who worked for Tokyo-based Asia Press International, was working on a television documentary.
According to the indictment, the militiamen set up a road block and opened fire on the church workers, who were on a mercy mission to deliver food and medicine to refugees.
They killed some of the victims and wounded others.
As survivors tried to escape, the gang attacked them with machetes.
A nun who had survived the initial assault was cut down as she prayed by the side of the road.
A teenage seminary student was tied to a tree and slashed to death.
The dead included a 69-year-old Italian nun, Ermina Cazzaniga, who had been in East Timor for 30 years.
The group is also charged with murdering three men in separate incidents.
Lt. Anwar is accused of leading all the attacks.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We have the preliminary hearing for 10 of the accused - all from the Laot district of East Timor, from Los Palos. Those 10 men were, the prosecutor says, either members of, or associated with the militia group called Team Alpha who carried out a series of crimes during the course of 1999. One in April and the other 4 during September, after the Referendum had taken place."
SUPER CAPTION: Stuart Alford, Prosecutor for Serious Crimes at the office of the General Prosecutor for East Timor
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"The militia group Team Alpha set up a road block on the road and stopped the vehicle as it was coming away from Laot town, off towards Bacau. They fired upon a group with some 30 rounds of bullets and they killed all in the vehicle, or those that survived they killed afterwards by the roadside. Eight members of the clergy and some brothers, monks and sisters, as well as a young boy who was on the road at the time. So nine people were killed in that attack."
SUPER CAPTION: Stuart Alford, Prosecutor for Serious Crimes at the office of the General Prosecutor for East Timor
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