|
Indonesian Prosecutors Consider Appealing U.N. Murder Verdicts
JAKARTA, May 5 (News Agencies) - Indonesia's top prosecutor said on Saturday his office was considering appealing the light sentences handed down to six East Timorese for the murders of three U.N. aid workers last year, which drew outrage from the United Nations.
"We are considering our next steps. We still want the verdicts to be the same as we have demanded," Attorney General Marzuki Darusman said after a cabinet meeting.
Prosecutors had sought a three-year jail term for each of the six defendants.
But a Jakarta court Friday sentenced the six to between 20 and 10 months in jail for their part in the violence that led to three members of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) being hacked to death in West Timor.
The judge in the trial, Anak Agung Gde Dalem, said that although some of the defendants had admitted taking part in hacking the victims to death before the bodies were burned, the three U.N. workers had died in a "mob attack," and therefore could not be charged with manslaughter.
"The attack was carried out not only by them but by a mob which makes it difficult to determine the perpetrators of the deaths," he said, explaining the reduction of the charges to "conspiracy to foment violence."
"The result of the autopsy also showed that the victims' bodies were badly damaged, making it difficult to identify who committed the manslaughter," the judge said.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, the UNHCR, the United States, the Croatian government and the United Nations Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET) have all expressed shock at the verdicts.
The three workers - an American, a Croatian and an Ethiopian - were hacked and bludgeoned to death and their bodies burned in their office in the West Timor border town of Atambua last September.
U.N. and other aid workers who were assisting tens of thousands of East Timorese refugees in West Timor were evacuated following the incident, and have yet to return.
Kofi Annan on Friday said the ruling appeared to be "incommensurate with what is known to have been deliberate and brutal killings."
The United States said it was "extremely disappointed" with the lenient sentences. One of the U.N. workers murdered was American, while the UNHCR called the sentences a "mockery" of the judicial process.
The verdicts come amid growing doubts among observers about Indonesia's commitment to prosecuting the perpetrators of violence surrounding East Timor's August 1999 vote for independence from Jakarta.
Indonesia has promised to carry out its own prosecutions to avoid handing the accused over to an international war crimes tribunal.
|
