CANBERRA (Reuters) - A coroner urged the Australian government on Friday to seek war crimes charges against former Indonesian military officers over the 1975 killing of five Australian newsmen during Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.
New South Wales state deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch ruled the five Australians, known as the Balibo five, had been deliberately tracked and killed by Indonesian forces who were moving into Balibo, just across the border in East Timor, in October 1975 ahead of a full invasion of the former Portuguese colony.
"The journalists were not incidental casualties in the fighting, they were captured, then deliberately killed despite protesting their status," Pinch ruled on Friday.
Her finding is at odds with Indonesia's long-held version that the newsmen were killed in crossfire during a firefight at Balibo.
Pinch named former Indonesian Special Forces captain Yunus Yosfiah, a retired general and now a senior Indonesian lawmaker, as the man who ordered the killings to stop any reports that special forces were involved in the attack on Balibo.
She also said there was strong circumstantial evidence that the orders to kill the newsmen came ultimately from the head of the Indonesian special forces, Major-General Benny Murdani.
Indonesia said the coroner's finding would not change its position.
"The coroner's court has a very limited jurisdiction and its decision won't change our stance about what happened," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kristiarto Legowo told a news conference. "It won't change our position that it is a closed case."
The Indonesian military said the coroner's verdict was an Australian domestic affair.
"I wonder how did they (the coroner) come up with such a conclusion," military spokesman Sagom Tamboen said.
"For us, our own resolution to past cases in East Timor is the best way," he said, referring to Indonesia's rights tribunal for East Timor abuses and the truth commission set up by Dili and Jakarta.
All military and police officers charged in the rights tribunal were either acquitted or had their convictions overturned on appeal.
