Australian court issues warrant for Indonesian MP
Source: Reuters
CANBERRA, March 1 (Reuters) - An Australian court issued a warrant on Thursday for the arrest of a senior Indonesian lawmaker after he failed to appear at an inquest into the killing 31 years ago of five Australian journalists in East Timor. Indonesian parliamentarian Yunis Yosfiah, a retired general and former information minister, has been accused of ordering the execution of Brian Peters and four other Australian newsmen at Balibo during the October 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor. At the urging of family, a Sydney coronial inquest is looking into their deaths, which remain unsolved. Deputy New South Wales State Coroner Dorelle Pinch said Yunis had refused four letters asking him to attend the inquiry and give evidence. "It is probable that he will not appear to be examined unless compelled to do so," Pinch said after issuing the warrant. The order has no validity outside Australia and Pinch said the warrant did not mean Yunis was guilty of anything. Yunis, a former Indonesian special forces captain and still a member of parliament representing the Muslim-based United Development Party, told an Indonesian parliamentary commission in 2001 he had never met the five and did not order their killings. Yunis told journalists this week he had no intention of answering the Australian summons and described eyewitness evidence at the inquest as "bullshit". He has called his accusers liars. Official reports have blamed the deaths of the five newsmen on October 16, 1975 on crossfire, as Indonesian forces entered East Timor on the first day of the invasion. The deaths of the Balibo Five, as Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Gary Cunningham, Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie came to be known, prompted long-running allegations of a government cover-up in both Indonesia and Australia. Australia's then Labor government under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam is alleged to have told Indonesia's Suharto government that Canberra did not want to get dragged into a dispute over the invasion of the former Portuguese territory.
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