NSW:Yosfiah named in connection to Balilbo Five deaths: inquest

AAP General News (Australia)
02-14-2007
NSW:Yosfiah named in connection to Balilbo Five deaths: inquest

By Adam Bennett

SYDNEY, Feb 14 AAP - Former Indonesian minister Yunus Yosfiah has again been named
at a coronial inquest in Sydney into the death of one of five Australian-based newsmen
killed in East Timor almost 32 years ago.

Giving evidence at an inquest into journalist Brian Peters, former pro-Indonesian UDT
Party fighter Fernando Mariz identified Mr Yosfiah as the commander of the Balibo operations
in 1975 and the one who ordered the five journalists be killed.

On the day of the Balibo invasion, October 16, 1975, Mr Mariz was in charge of a supply
convoy travelling between an Indonesian military training camp at Batugade and Maliana,
which passed through Balibo on the way.

Arriving in Balibo that morning, after the fighting had stopped, Mr Mariz told the
inquiry that noticed a house in the village was on fire.

When he asked East Timorese fighters, who had taken part in the invasion, what the
cause of the fire was, he was told the bodies of the five journalists were being disposed
of after Indonesian troops killed them.

"They said the journalists had put their hands up and said: 'We are Australia's press',"

Mr Mariz told Glebe Coroner's Court.

"But they said: 'We killed all of them'."

Asked by counsel assisting the inquiry Mark Tedeschi, QC, who had ordered the killings,
Mr Mariz identified the commander in charge of the operation in Balibo.

While he didn't know the name of the commander in 1975, Mr Mariz told the inquest he
had recognised a photograph of the man in a Sydney Morning Herald article of 1998.

When Mr Tedeschi produced the photo of Yunus Yosfiah published in the newspaper, Mr
Mariz again identified Mr Yosfiah as the man.

Mr Yosfiah later became the Indonesian information minister.

Mr Mariz also told the inquest he had been told by East Timorese fighters that the
dead journalists had been dressed in Portuguese military uniform and their bodies photographed
before Indonesian troops burned them.

"They said ... if the Australians complain, we have proof to show they were involved
in the war," he said.

The inquest continues.

AAP ab/kaj/klw/it/cdh

KEYWORD: BALIBO

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