Kiwi 'hero' risks life to save Timorese kids from mob

A Kiwi police officer is being hailed a hero after risking his life to save 21 East Timorese children sheltering inside the New Zealand Embassy in Dili as a machete-wielding mob attempted to breach the compound's gates.

In an exclusive interview with the Herald on Sunday, Superintendent Athol Soper recounted a harrowing, Hotel Rwanda-style story of helping organise the escape of New Zealand Ambassador to East Timor Ruth Nuttall from the besieged embassy a week ago.

Earlier events had spiralled out of control after Nuttall gave the go-ahead for two teenage survivors of the beating, killing and burning of a mother and five of her children to shelter in the embassy.

However, 25 desperate East Timorese, most of whom are believed to be members of the extended family of controversial Interior Minister Rogerio Lobato, turned up. The mob, brandishing machetes, iron bars, wooden clubs and firearms, quickly followed, issuing death threats via mobiles to the two survivors.

"We took that as a global threat to all the people that were in there," said Soper, in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, where he had arrived to help assess New Zealand's response to the May 29 earthquake tragedy.

As the ambassador, protected by three Kiwi defence personnel, departed, Soper elected to stay, despite the very real threat the compound would be overrun and he would be hacked to death.

"It was important we protected our ambassador first so we planned a move to the Australian Embassy... and it was imperative, I believe, for us to safeguard the local people who remained in the embassy."

Over the course of the next seven hours, Soper and the group remained trapped, separated only by a security fence and the poor defences of the embassy building itself, awaiting rescue. Did he fear death?

"Not at the time because your training and experience takes over, and you have a lot of functions that you need to do, your mind is constantly planning alternatives and scenarios, taking into account what factors are available and what is the logical thing to do.

"So you haven't got time, really, to consider your personal safety."

New Zealand Ambassador to Indonesia Phillip Gibson applauded Soper's actions.

"In my experience of him he is an outstanding person who always supports and gives credit to others but in my view this has been a magnificent example of real courage and putting the interests of women and children before everything else. I would say he is a quiet, unassuming hero. And he would be the first to say that there are many others among the New Zealanders in Dili as well."

Soper said that at the end of the day, all he and the other Kiwis involved did was their jobs.

"There were a number of people there who did extraordinary things," he said, including the ambassador and unarmed members of the New Zealand military.