A former Indonesian army colonel has told a magazine that soldiers deliberately killed five Western journalists in East Timor in 1975, contradicting his government's line that they accidentally died in a crossfire.
The explosive claim in the weekly Tempo magazine, published on Monday, further fuels diplomatic tensions between Indonesia and Australia created in September when Australian federal police launched a war crimes investigation into the journalists' deaths in the East Timorese border town of Balibo in the weeks before Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony.
It comes amid renewed public interest in the case spurred by the release this year of an Australian movie about the incident named Balibo. Indonesian authorities have banned the Robert Connolly-directed movie's release in that country.
Gatot Purwanto told Tempo he was a lieutenant in the special forces team that overran Balibo on October 16, 1975. The journalists, who have become known as the Balibo Five, were shot to keep secret Indonesia's military involvement two months before a full-blown invasion, he said.
Asked if the soldiers decided to kill the reporters - two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander - Purwanto said "yes".
"If they had been left alive, they would say it was an Indonesian invasion," Purwanto said.
He said the bodies were burned to hide the evidence.
Yunus Yosfiah, who was then an army captain and later a government minister, had been waiting for instructions from Jakarta on what to do with the foreigners when they were killed, Purwanto said.
Neither Yosfiah nor Purwanto, who now runs a security firm, could be contacted on Monday. An Indonesian government spokesman had no comment.
The Balibo movie depicts Indonesian soldiers shooting and stabbing the unarmed journalists. Indonesia's censorship board said the script was based on testimony of witnesses of "questionable nature".
AP