Coroner Concludes Balibo 5 Were Murdered

In June, I blogged about evidence presented at a New South Wales Coroner’s Court indicating that, contrary to the longstanding position of the Indonesian and Australian governments, Indonesian troops murdered five journalists in Balibo on October 16, 1975, the first full day of Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor.

Last week, the deputy coroner in New South Wales officially concluded that the killings were deliberate — and suggested, in what is certain to set off a firestorm of controversy, that the killers should be prosecuted for war crimes:

A coroner investigating the deaths of five Australia-based journalists in East Timor in 1975 concluded Friday that Indonesian troops deliberately shot or stabbed the men to death to hide Indonesia’s invasion of the territory.

The finding is likely to stoke a long-running controversy surrounding the case by contradicting the Indonesian and Australian governments’ official version of events: that the journalists were killed accidentally in crossfire between Indonesian troops and East Timorese defenders in the town of Balibo. It could also strain Australia-Indonesia diplomatic ties because it names three former senior officers of Indonesia’s special military forces as likely having ordered the killings, and suggests they should face possible war crimes charges.

[snip]

New South Wales state deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch, who heard evidence from witnesses and viewed secret intelligence documents during a six-week inquest, rejected Indonesia’s insistence for decades that the men were accidental victims of its attacking troops on Oct. 16, 1975. “The journalists were not incidental casualties in the fighting: they were captured then deliberately killed despite protesting their status,” Ms. Pinch said.

Technically, Ms. Pinch only investigated the death of Brian Raymond Peters, a British-born cameraman who was among crews from two Australian television networks who went to Balibo to cover the anticipated Indonesian invasion of East Timor as it descended toward civil war following the end of Portuguese colonial rule. But she said it was impossible to investigate the death of one of the journalists without probing the others, and that her findings applied equally to all of them.

Ms. Pinch found that Mr. Peters was “shot and/or stabbed deliberately, and not in the heat of battle, by members of the Indonesian Special Forces … to prevent him from revealing that Indonesian Special Forces had participated in the attack on Balibo.” She said the journalists were killed on the orders of Yunus Yosfiah, who was then an Indonesian military captain and later a government minister. He has denied it.

There is “strong circumstantial evidence” that Mr. Yosfiah’s orders to kill the journalists came down the chain of command from the then-head of Indonesian Special Forces, Maj. Gen. Benny Murdani, Ms. Pinch said. She said she believed the evidence supported possible war crimes charges, and that she would refer the case to the government to decide whether to pursue them. In Australia, a coroner does not have the power to file charges.

Attorney General Phillip Ruddock said he would forward Ms. Pinch’s recommendations to police and prosecutors who have responsibility for investigating and compiling war crimes charges.

Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Kristiarto Legowo rejected Ms. Pinch’s findings. “The verdict will not change our assertion on what happened in Balibo at the time, namely that those five journalists were killed in crossfire,” Mr. Legowo said in Jakarta. “It is a closed case.”

[snip]

Prime Minister John Howard said he would seek advice on what was an appropriate next step. Opposition leader Kevin Rudd, who opinion polls say is favored to become prime minister at elections next week, indicated he would follow up on the war crimes recommendation. “I believe this has to be taken through to its logical conclusion,” he said. “I also believe that those responsible should be held to account.”

As I noted in my earlier post, the killers of the Balibo 5 could be prosecuted in Australia for war crimes pursuant to the Geneva Conventions Act 1957, which criminalizes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions even when committed outside of Australia or one of its territories.