'Payback' threat mires rebuilding in Timor

By GREG ANSLEY in Timor

Life does not hold much hope for the men huddled with blankets around their shoulders in the cells of Gleno prison, south of the East Timorese city of Liquicia.

Most are alleged murderers and rapists - frequently multiple killers - such as Carlos "Comando" de Jesus, a militia leader arrested on four counts of murder by New Zealand troops in the southwest of the world's newest nation.

Among their warders and in surrounding Gleno, itself devastated during the violence after last year's independence vote, are the relatives of their alleged victims.

For the moment they are safe, guarded by six New Zealand warders sent to East Timor to set up a new prison system at Gleno and Becora, further to the east.

What happens after the United Nations pulls out and the prisons are handed over to the Timorese is far less certain.

Under Indonesian law, which until a new judicial system is introduced operates in conjunction with United Nations basic law, militia members convicted of murder will be jailed for 20 years.

The reality may be much shorter - and more brutal.

According to Wayne Carmichael, a Wellington prison officer in charge of Gleno jail, local anger already makes it too dangerous to escort ill prisoners to clinics outside the walls. Health workers must be brought to them instead.

About 80 per cent of his prisoners are accused of horrific crimes committed during the height of militia violence. His sole woman inmate allegedly strangled her baby on the orders of her militia husband in the conviction that the child had no future in an independent East Timor.

If the new nation is unable to ensure a secure and strict transfer from UN control to an established rule of law, Mr Carmichael fears the prisoners will not survive retribution by the people of Gleno.

"They're sitting here waiting," he says. "This is payback time."

Gleno is just one of the challenges facing Timor as it struggles to piece together a new democracy and the laws to run and uphold it.

The immediate priorities are the completion of a legal code and the expansion of courts, judges, police and jails to cope not only with the normal run of crime and litigation of any nation, but also to clear the huge backlog of crime from the militia rampage.

The pressure on investigation, prosecution and incarceration staff is overwhelming.

According to estimates by the UN civilian police (Civpol), the Gleno area alone has 700 known violent offenders, compounded by the release of prisoners during the crisis of last September.

In the southwestern border area of Suai, Civpol investigators have a caseload of up to 500 murders - about 200 from the massacre at Suai Cathedral - and several hundred more rapes committed by militia and Indonesian security forces.

More work is filtering back as refugees begin to return in large numbers again with the end of the wet season and campaigns by both UN and Indonesian authorities to send home East Timorese still in camps in the west.

About half the estimated 100,000 remaining in the camps are expected to return, among them many members of the militia.

Brigadier Duncan Lewis, the Australian commanding the western border sector, says that provided they did not commit serious crimes and are prepared to live peacefully and productively in the new East Timor, they will be accepted.

But small numbers of wanted killers continue to be picked up at border crossings, and others have filtered back to join local thugs in running extortion rings in isolated areas of the southwest.

One ring was broken last week in a dawn raid by New Zealand soldiers.

In other areas, returning militia have been beaten, even killed, by villagers despite a broader acceptance of rehabilitation after, in some cases, the serving of some kind of community penance.

Wider problems resulting from the destruction of social order are also starting to emerge.

At Gleno, Mr Carmichael says, outsiders recruited to help rebuild the area or arriving to set up new businesses have been driven out by locals determined to keep control of their own economy. Even much-needed nurses from Dili were turned away.

In Dili, New Zealand police superintendent Lindsay Murdoch, deputy Civpol district commander, says villages often reject refugees returning from the west because of alleged militia connections or resentment at their decision to flee the violence.

Many join the growing throng of unemployed and disaffected in the capital.

"Dili has become something of a dumping ground," Mr Murdoch says.

The capital is a volatile and at times dangerous place.