Indonesian authorities plan to open the trial of six people suspected of killing three UN relief workers in West Timor, in Jakarta by mid-November, a police officer said Sunday.
The trials will open before November 15 and will be held in Jakarta because the security conditions in Atambua, where the killings occurred on September 6, were "unconducive," the Police chief of the province that includes West Timor, Brigadier General I Made Mangku Pastika said.
Pastika was speaking in Kupang, the capital of the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur and the main city on West Timor, the Antara news agency said.
Pastika said police dossiers of the six suspects would be completed and handed over to the state prosecution office in Atambua next week. He mentioned no names.
"After we hand over the dossiers, we will ask the Atambua prosecutors' office to demand that the case of the UNHCR (murders) be tried in Jakarta because of security reasons," Pastika said.
Hundreds of machete-wielding pro-Indonesia militiamen attacked the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Atambua, killing three of its foreign staff there.
The militia men were among some 130,000 East Timorese still holed up in camps following the post-ballot violence in East Timor in September last year.
The militias, who went into a frenzy of killings and destruction following the pro-independence results of a UN-held ballot in East Timor, later fled to West Timor with the arrival of the UN-sanctioned multinational peacekeeping force.
The post ballot violence forced some 300,000 people to flee into West Timor and over 100,000 others to hide in the forests of East Timor.
The militias have gained control of the refugee camps in West Timor and been accused of harassing relief and rights workers assisting the refugees and intimidating East Timorese wanting to return home.
Pastika said Indonesian authorities also planned to hold the trial of former militia leader Eurico Guterres in Jakarta, also for security reasons.
A Jakarta court ordered police to release Guterres after it found police had not arrested the former militia leader with the required warrant.
Guterres, however, sought police protection upon release and is staying at a police witness protection house.
Pastika said the evidence would be flown to Jakarta next week.
However, suspects of the killing of former militia leader Olivio Mendoza Moruk, whose violent death sparked the attack on the UNHCR office, will be tried in Atambua, he said.
Pastika said dossiers of those suspects were ready and would be handed over to the Atambua prosecutors' office next week -- JAKARTA (AFP)
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