Global Policy Forum

By Joanna Jolly

An East Timorese militia leader implicated in the violence that ravaged the territory after its 1999 vote for independence from Indonesia returned home Wednesday to face charges of human rights violations.

Nemecio Lopes de Carvalho, deputy commander of the Mahidi paramilitary gang, is the most senior anti-independence leader to return yet.

Pro-Jakarta militias murdered hundreds of people, laid waste to the territory and forced 300,000 to flee to West Timor after the overwhelming majority of voters opted to secede from Indonesia in a U.N.-sponsored ballot in August, 1999.

U.N. agencies say around 50,000 East Timorese refugees remain in the camps which are controlled by the former militiamen.

De Carvalho's return follows almost a year of negotiations between U.N. administrators, East Timorese leaders and former militiamen from West Timor.

"I am ready to face justice," he said after he entered East Timor along with truckloads of around 300 refugees returning home. He was heading for Dili to be interviewed by U.N. prosecutors, who have implicated him in the 1999 carnage but have yet to issue a warrant for his arrest.

De Carvalho, said his brother Cancio, Mahidi ex-commander, is expected to return next month.

About 500 more refugees were expected to return to East Timor on Thursday.

Mahidi - an acronym for Life or Death for Indonesia - was one of the most feared paramilitary gangs operating in the province prior to the independence vote. Human rights investigators have accused the de Carvalho brothers of committing numerous crimes in the border area they controlled.

The militias are accused of being recruited by the Indonesian army in an effort to intimidate voters into opting for integration.

They have denied any wrongdoing and have said that Indonesian army commanders had incited the bloodshed.

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