Forwarded to:     rrojas@rrojasdatabank.org
Date forwarded:   Wed, 3 Jun 1998 11:20:40 +0000
Date sent:        Mon, 25 May 1998 23:24:51 -0500
Send reply to:    Forum on Labor in the Global Economy LABOR-L@YORKU.CA
From:             Kim Scipes sscipe1@ICARUS.CC.UIC.EDU
Subject:          FWD: Indonesia briefing (2/3)
To:               LABOR-L@YORKU.CA

Second of three messages re. Indonesia.

Redistributed for educational, noncommercial use only.

     ELITE UNIT SUSPECTED OF TORTURE
________________________________________________________

     Troops Received Training by U.S.

     THE WASHINGTON POST
     By Dana Priest, Washington Post Staff Writer
     Saturday, May 23, 1998; Page A01
     http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-05/23/

U.S. officials believe that an elite U.S.-trained military
unit in Indonesia has been involved in kidnapping and torturing
political dissidents, and Washington is considering a permanent
ban on ties with the unit, U.S. defense and diplomatic officials
said.

Shortly after a number of influential political activists
began disappearing in February, the U.S. ambassador in Jakarta,
J. Stapleton Roy, met with Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto, who headed
the Kopassus special forces until March, to express U.S. anger
over the disappearances and to request that Prabowo try to gain
the activists' release, sources said.

U.S. officials said Prabowo denied that the troops were
involved. But in the weeks following the U.S. entreaty,
government sources said, four of the dissidents were released and
several others were transferred to the Metropolitan Jakarta
Police Command, where they remain.

Prabowo was sacked yesterday by his military rival, Gen.
Wiranto, the head of the Indonesian armed forces, who is
consolidating his power after the resignation this week of
President Suharto. U.S. sources in the region said they have been
told Wiranto is accusing Prabowo of ordering the shooting of
students in demonstrations two weeks ago and of the
disappearances. Prabowo, who is Suharto's son-in-law, declined
requests for an interview.

"The U.S. government has made it clear in public statements
and private meetings with Indonesian officials that we were
concerned about the disappearances, and we urged respect for
human rights and the due process of law," said Pentagon spokesman
Kenneth H. Bacon, who otherwise declined to discuss the
allegations against Kopassus.

Despite the U.S. concern about the kidnappings and
Indonesia's deteriorating political situation, officials tried to
maintain good relations with Prabowo and Kopassus. Even after
Roy's meeting with Prabowo, U.S. Special Forces troops held three
training exercises with Kopassus -- in March, April and May.

Defense officials said the charges are particularly
sensitive given the still volatile situation in Indonesia and the
presence of Americans there. In several interviews here and in
Indonesia, U.S. officials confirmed their strong suspicion that
Kopassus was behind the abuses.

Western sources said the United States became convinced that
Kopassus likely was responsible for the recent round of
disappearances, based on independent information gleaned in
Indonesia and from public and private descriptions of conditions
in captivity made by some of those released.

The possible involvement of Kopassus troops could become an
embarrassment for the U.S. military, which nurtured its ties with
the unit through frequent training exercises involving America's
most highly skilled guerrilla warriors and visits by senior
military officers.

Prabowo, 47, whose ties to the U.S. military are the closest
of any among the U.S.-trained officer corps, attended the
Advanced Infantry Officers Course at Fort Benning, Ga., in 1985
and the Army Special Forces Training Course at Fort Bragg, N.C.,
in 1980.

In January, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen met with
Prabowo and was treated to a display of Kopassus skills, which
included unflinching contact with scorpions and bats. Since 1991,
U.S. Special Forces troops have conducted 41 training exercises
with Indonesian troops, and at least 26 of those were with
Kopassus. The training involved counterterrorism, mission
planning, sniper skills and rapid infiltration of troops. U.S.
defense analysts in Jakarta said the training included
discussions of the human rights standards of the U.S. military.

The exercises were suspended two weeks ago because of the
unrest in the country. High-ranking U.S. officers have said they
are hopeful the training will resume. But a senior State
Department official said this week that a cutoff of all ties with
Kopassus "is a likely outcome."

International human rights organizations have long accused
Kopassus of human rights violations, especially in the outlying
regions of East Timor, Aceh and Irian Jaya, where tiny, poorly
armed insurgencies exist.

"The United States should ban any further cooperation with
Kopassus until a full investigation has been completed and those
accused have been prosecuted," said Sidney Jones of Human Rights
Watch.

Fifteen political activists have been reported kidnapped
since February. Four have been released and as many as seven are
believed to have been transferred to a Jakarta police station.
Seven of the men, including three who have been released,
reportedly were held in the same detention facility and spoke to
each other through cell walls at different times.

Some of the former captives have provided details about
their surroundings that have been helpful in determining where
they were held, officials said. The descriptions mention a daily
military-style bugle call, the sound of particular aircraft close
by, the sight of military pistols and a description of the road
on which the detainees traveled on the day of their release.

The presence of several dissidents in the same place,
Western officials said, indicates that their abduction was part
of a centralized, organized operation and not one carried out by
renegade troops or police. Some captives have also told
Indonesian investigators that they overheard their captors
talking about receiving foreign military training.

These and other details have given Western government
officials reasons to believe that the detainees may have been
held at a military base in south Jakarta used by Kopassus's Group
4 intelligence unit and its Group 5 counterterrorism unit.

Group 4 is responsible for interrogations and carries out
clandestine operations around the country, according to Western
defense officials.

The U.S. Special Forces held a maritime exercise with Group
5 in August and September 1996. They have not conducted exercises
with Group 4, but Western defense officials here note that
members of Kopassus are routinely rotated from place to place and
group to group, just like in the United States.

The captives held together include Puis Lustrilanang,
chairman of the People's Alliance for Democracy, who told
Congress two weeks ago that he believed the military was
responsible for the abductions, and Desmond J. Mahesa, chairman
of the Jakarta branch of the Nusantara Legal Aid Foundation, who
described his ordeal at a Jakarta news conference last week.

Puis, who fled to the Netherlands after his release,
testified that he was tortured.

Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

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