Timor ex-police chief convicted

Hulman Gultom criticised the court's ruling

A special Indonesian human rights court has sentenced a former East Timor police chief to three years in jail.

Hulman Gultom was convicted for failing to stop his subordinates carry out two attacks in 1999, as violence raged over East Timor's vote for independence from Indonesia.

COURT RECORD

Four people guilty

Eleven acquitted

Three await verdicts

He is the fourth person to have been convicted by the court, which has been criticised by human rights activists for acquitting 11 other defendants.

The court found that Gultom, former police chief of East Timor's capital Dili, failed to stop attacks on the home of a prominent pro-independence leader, Manuel Carrascalao, in April 1999, and on a church building in Dili in September 1999.

A total of 14 people were killed in the attacks.

Presiding judge Andriani Nurdin said Mr Gultom "has been found guilty of grave human rights violations".

Gultom, who remains free pending an appeal, complained about the verdict.

"I have risked my life to prevent the riots but I have been found guilty," he said.

Flaw

The Jakarta court was set up because of international pressure on Indonesia to tackle human rights abuses committed as it withdrew from East Timor.

Before the verdict on Gultom was handed down, only three defendants had been found guilty.

One of these, the notorious pro-Jakarta militia leader Eurico Guterres, was sentenced to 10 years in jail in November.

At least 1,000 people were killed before, during and after East Timor's overwhelming vote, in August 1999, to break away from 24 years of Indonesian rule.

Rights experts have noted that a key flaw of Jakarta's human rights court is its failure to try top officers, including the presiding commander at the time of the violence, General Wiranto.

In December, the panel of five judges found Dili's former military commander, Lieutenant Colonel Soejarwo, guilty for similar charges, including a September 1999 attack on the office and home of Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, just days after the vote.

Soejarwo has said he would appeal against the verdict.