East Timor to deliver verdict on assassination bids
AFP March 3, 2010 — An East Timor court is to deliver its verdict on Wednesday against 28 people including an Australian citizen charged over the attempted assassination of the president and prime minister in 2008.
Prosecutors have called for sentences of up to 20 years in jail against the defendants over the February 11 attack by rebels in the tiny former Indonesian territory.
Gunmen shot at President Jose Ramos-Horta outside his Dili home, leaving him critically wounded, and also fired on the car of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, who escaped unhurt.
Rebel leader Alfredo Reinado was killed and his followers subsequently surrendered.
Prosecutor Felismeno Cardoso said last month that Reinado’s girlfriend Angelita Pires, an East Timor-born Australian, was a key player in the plot as she made several trips to the northern Australian city of Darwin to raise funds for the rebels.
Cardoso said that Pires, who holds dual citizenship, had encouraged the attack and said it should be made to look like a coup.
Her lawyer Jon Tippett insisted that Pires was innocent.
“I?m confident that the verdict will be a good one for us if the case is decided on the evidence,” he said Tuesday.
“We brought forward scientific evidence and other evidence to show that our client is clearly innocent of the counts that have been brought against her.”
The other defendants include ex-soldiers from a group of 600 who deserted in 2006, triggering fighting that killed some 40 people and forced 100,000 from their homes.
The death of the charismatic Reinado, coupled with public distress over Ramos-Horta’s brush with death, helped bring an end to the rebellion.
East Timor won formal independence in 2002, three years after a UN-backed referendum that saw an overwhelming vote to break away from Indonesia following a 24-year occupation.