The Sydney Morning Herald, September 19, 2005
Key witness to 1975 Balibo killings dies
By Jill Jolliffe in Darwin
A witness to the killing of five Australian journalists in Balibo, East Timor, in 1975 has
died in Dili, months before a new inquiry by the NSW Coroner.
Olandino Maia Guterres publicly accused former Indonesian minister Yunus Yosfiah in
1998 of having ordered the deaths of the five television journalists after they filmed an
attack on the border town.
Official reports claimed the men - Greg Shackleton, Gary Cunningham and Tony
Stewart of Channel Seven and Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters of Channel Nine -
were killed in crossfire.
Mr Guterres entered Balibo with the Indonesian troops. He told the ABC's Foreign
Correspondent program that from a distance of less than 20 metres he heard Yosfiah
give the order to shoot the men as they tried to surrender, and that he also saw him
fire shots at them.
The East Timorese police commander, Paulo Martins, said by phone from Dili
yesterday that Mr Guterres had apparently died of renal failure after several weeks of
illness.
The NSW Coroner, John Abernethy, announced in June that he would hold an inquest
into the death of Brian Peters, who was a resident of Sydney, in response to a
request from his sister Maureen Tolfree, of Bristol, England. This comes after five
previous inconclusive Australian inquiries and one UN-led investigation into the events.
The Coroners Court has been given documents from a United Nations inquiry to which
Mr Guterres and others testified but which stalled after Indonesia's attorney-general
blocked access to witnesses.
Mr Guterres was one of six alleged Timorese witnesses likely to have been called to
testify.
John Milkins, the son of Channel Seven cameraman Gary Cunningham, said Mr
Guterres had been a very valuable witness, always consistent.
He said the untimely death was a prime example of why such matters should be
investigated at the time, adding that the families were indebted to Mr Guterres, who
took great risks to tell his story.
The submission to the Coroners Court for Mrs Tolfree said that even if the families of
those killed could not get justice, they were entitled to the facts.
Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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