25 Bodies of Massacred E. Timorese Found, Report Says

State-appointed investigators have dug up mass graves containing the bodies of 25 people allegedly killed in the worst single massacre committed by anti-independence militias and Indonesian troops in East Timor, a press report said today.

The decaying corpses were discovered in West Timor at Oeuli Beach, nearly 2 miles from the border with the eastern half of the island, which is now under U.N. administration.

The victims, who reportedly include three Roman Catholic priests, are believed to have been killed in a militia attack in September on a church in Suai, a town in East Timor close to the border, said Munir, a member of the commission investigating militia and army crimes in East Timor. Like many Indonesians, he uses only one name.

The panel was set up by the government to undertake an independent probe of human rights abuses.

“We have found three bodies in the first grave, 11 in the second grave and 11 in the third grave,” Munir was quoted as saying in the Jakarta Post.

According to witnesses, dozens of people who took refuge in the church in Suai were killed when militiamen supported by Indonesian soldiers and police attacked the building.

The killings in Suai are generally considered to be the deadliest single massacre in the three-week militia rampage that followed East Timor’s overwhelming vote for independence in a U.N.-sponsored referendum Aug. 30.

Munir said autopsies on the three priests had determined that one had been shot and that the other two died of knife wounds.

Meanwhile, a U.N. official in East Timor accused Indonesia on Thursday of trying to stall efforts to set up a mission to investigate human rights abuses in the province. Sonia Picado, who heads the U.N. Commission of Inquiry in East Timor, said Indonesia had delayed a meeting of the U.N. Economic and Social Committee, which must approve the mandate of the commission.