First public hearing held by district court in East Timor: UNTAET
12 May --The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) has reported the holding of the first public proceeding by the district court in the country's capital city.
According to UNTAET, the Dili District Court yesterday opened its first public detention review in the case of a man suspected of killing a militia member in September 1999. Lawyers for the suspect, who has been detained for the last five months, are arguing that his detention is now illegal since it exceeds the 110-day limit of pre-trail detention set out by the applied Indonesian law.
The hearing began one day after UNTAET chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello, signed a regulation stipulating that pre-trial detention will only be ordered for crimes that carry more than one year of imprisonment under the law. Under ordinary circumstances, a suspect may be held for questioning for an initial period of up to 48 hours within which the suspect should be brought before a judge or released, UNTAET said.
In other news, UN flags throughout East Timor were flown at half mast today after a UN military observer from Malaysia died in a Darwin hospital yesterday morning. The final medical report on the cause of death of the observer, who had been admitted a week ago with symptoms of malaria, is still to be released by hospital authorities. The victim was the third UNTAET staff member to die from a disease since the UN mission's deployment last October.
