[Kabar-indonesia] Arrest East Timor PM: local police chief

[Joyo at aol.com]

The Age [Melbourne] 
June 25, 2006 

Arrest East Timor PM: local police chief

East Timor's police chief Paulo Martins has called for
the arrest of prime minister Mari Alkatiri over
charges of plotting to kill his political opponents.

"He should be arrested...it's the law that says so,"
he said from a mountain location south of Dili after
testifying last week to chief prosecutor Longuinhos
Monteiro.

The commissioner has refused to return to Dili since
May 24 when he trekked out of the capital on foot amid
spreading violence.

He has been described as a deserter by government
leaders but told AAP they threatened his life after he
opposed their distribution of stolen police guns to
civilians and attempts to use the police force as a
political tool.

Soon after he left, 12 other police officers were
killed by the army, which was mobilised by Alkatiri
without the consent of President Xanana Gusmao, the
military supreme commander.

Martins said the prime minister should be tried along
with disgraced interior minister Rogerio Lobato, who
appeared in court Thursday on arms-related charges
carrying penalties of 15 years imprisonment.

"I expect the prosecutor will enforce the law," he
said.

Monteiro travelled to the police chief's mountain base
to take evidence on Friday, after Lobato corroborated
testimony from whistle-blower Vicente da Conceicao.

Da Conceicao, known as "Comandante Railos", testified
that the prime minister had ordered the arms
distribution at a secret meeting of the three men on
May 7.

East Timor has suffered continuing violence since
March, when around 600 soldiers known as "the
petitioners" were sacked from the army.

Thousands of demonstrators demanded Alkatiri resign or
be sacked as they were driven in trucks through Dili
streets at the weekend.

Alkatiri, who is blamed for the turmoil, has been the
target of mounting demands for his resignation in a
country that now appears rudderless. He refuses to
quit and his arrest may be used to end the stalemate.

The police chief described a May 21 meeting of key
ministers and security personnel where foreign
minister Jose Ramos Horta raised the question of the
illegal arms with Alkatiri after being briefed by
Martins two days earlier.

He said the prime minister did not react, although he
also had a letter from him telling him that the
interior minister had illegally distributed police
guns.

"He just kept silent," he said, "...I find it very
strange that he now says he knew nothing."

He said Lobato then told the meeting the men he had
given guns to were "hand-picked by me, with guerrilla
experience. They're good shots and could finish off
the petitioners bare-handed if necessary."

In the May 19 letter Martins told Alkatiri that
civilians with 17 HK33 assault rifles issued by Lobato
had appeared in the southern city of Suai.

"If this is with your knowledge, then I cannot oppose
it," he wrote, but underlined that the interior
minister had taken them without the commissioner's
knowledge or consent and that the population of Suai
was consequently "in a state of panic."

The police chief said he was first aware Lobato was
helping himself to weapons when the army attacked the
unarmed petitioners in April.

He said the minister had entered the police armoury
and taken out an FN2000 gun which he waved in the air,
shouting to him: "Get yourself a gun, we're going to
clean these guys up, let's kill these guys!"

He referred to his former boss as "a terrorist",
saying he had told him he received terrorist training
in Libya.

Mr Lobato's visits to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leader
Pol Pot in the 1970s have also been documented
recently by human rights workers in Phnom Penh.

The East Timorese police chief said he objected to a
statement by Robert Hill, Australia's ambassador to
the UN, that an Australian should now be put in charge
of the East Timorese police.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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