SAS squad 'hunting killers' of NZ soldier

By JAMES GARDINER

A team of five elite SAS Army "trackers" is in the East Timor frontline hunting the killers of Private Leonard Manning, according to a military source close to the unit.

The Defence Force is not commenting on whether the New Zealand Special Air Service soldiers are in operation.

However, defence staff yesterday did break with normal policy and denied a claim that our SAS took part in a major attack on Indonesian troops in West Timor earlier this year.

The report on the trackers, in Investigate magazine, came as a surprise to Private Manning's mother, Linda.

Mrs Manning said she was unlikely to be told by the Army. "That sort of information obviously has to be kept under wraps." Private Manning, aged 24, was killed on July 24 by Indonesian-backed militia fighters, who mutilated his body. He was one of more than 600 New Zealand troops in East Timor.

At his funeral in Te Kauwhata last month, Prime Minister Helen Clark said New Zealanders shared repugnance at what had happened. "We want Private Manning's murderers tracked down and brought to justice."

Investigate's latest issue says that is exactly what is happening. A planeload of SAS troops flew to the combat zone in the first week of August.

Militias in West Timor have become so dangerous that international aid agencies are pulling out to protect their staff.

Two months ago, Investigate claimed that SAS troops from New Zealand and Australia had killed up to 100 Indonesian soldiers in a secret raid across the West Timor border, without suffering casualties of their own.

That raid, on military barracks at Atapupu, was said to have "taken out" an Indonesian unit blamed for incursions into East Timor and massacres of East Timorese women and children.

Magazine editor Ian Wishart said yesterday he stood by both stories. He had information from SAS soldiers, whom he trusted, and had subsequently received calls confirming that the report was correct and that photographic evidence existed. No one had challenged the report, he said.

Defence Force spokesman Wing Commander John Seward said from Wellington yesterday that the report of SAS soldiers killing 100 Indonesians was "pure fiction."

"The NZSAS was not in West Timor, there was no clash."

Asked whether the SAS was now in Timor, he had nothing to add.

Wishart said his sources suggested at least a dozen of the specially trained soldiers were on missions with their Australian counterparts, using Australia's Blackhawk helicopters for transport.

Mrs Manning, of Putaruru, whose son was the first New Zealand soldier killed in action since Vietnam, said there was a job to be done in Timor.

"Whether or not it's personally avenging our son's death, it's neither here nor there. We don't feel any anger in particular to the people that did it.

"Their worth to me doesn't come halfway up my son's bootstraps. There's been 25 years of abuse of the East Timorese people; that's got to be stopped somehow.

"Our son is one casualty."

Herald Online feature: the Timor mission

UN Transitional Administration in E Timor