Major suspects escape justice while small fish fry in East Timor

For effect, US statesman Colin Powell announces to the world that it will not normalise military relations with Indonesia, (which were severed after the TNI led the September 1999 clandestine operation into East Timor), unless justice is seen to be done.

Coincidentally, in the same week, the US lodges an unprecedented appeal by the Department of State to a Federal court judge to dismiss a civil case against oil giant ExxonMobil. This civil suit alleges that ExxonMobil, or more specifically its major natural gas operation in Ache, was responsible for grave human rights abuses committed by Indonesian security forces in the province.

This open and direct encroachment upon the independence of US judiciary, not only places in doubt the resolve of the administration of President George Bush to enforce corporate responsibility but also highlights an insidious trade in human lives for oil and gas interests and calls into question whether there is any political will to try the masterminds of terror.

To compound this appalling conduct, the US State Department also negotiated with the newly independent East Timor to sign an agreement exempting U.S. military personnel from prosecution before the International Criminal Court. This exemption, signed on Friday 23 August 2002, joins Timor with Romania and Israel as the third government to sign such a pact, known as an Article 98 agreement.

And then insult to injury. The recent appointment of Henry Kissinger to head a US expert commission into terrorism is the crowning act of impunity. This appointment flies in the face of a compelling case for arraignment, and direct evidence that Kissinger aided and abetted the1975 Suharto-led invasion and traded arms that directly amassed a death toll in Timor equal to the casualties experienced by the Soviet Union in the Second World War. As Christopher Hitchens puts it: "His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anacharsis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs; strong enough to detain only the weak and too weak to hold the strong."

In light of these international events, imagine how my client feels to hear that the enforcement of human rights are negotiable in some corners of the globe if you have influential friends, and that he will face as much as 33 years for his part in the events of September 1999, while his TNI superiors will thumb their noses at the justice process. And add to this how he might feel, knowing that a US citizen accused of the same offences would never be indicted for international crimes by his government.

What might he think when he rises in the court to receive a sentence of eternity, knowing that an appeal of his sentence is unlikely given that no Appeal Chambers has operated in Timor for most part of last year? After more than two years in custody without review of his detention, he could be excused for maintaining a well founded contempt for a system of selective justice that reeks of double standard.