New light to be shed on East Timor invasion
The Age
Tuesday March 29, 2011
THE veil of secrecy obscuring what Australia knew about Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor has been pulled back a little, with a successful court challenge revealing never-before-seen details of secret intelligence briefings.It follows a four-year battle with the government waged by an Australian Defence Force Academy academic, Clinton Fernandes, to reveal what he believes is evidence of Australian complicity in the invasion, which led to a bloody 24-year occupation.The documents may also shed light on the fates of the five Australian newsmen killed in the East Timorese border town of Balibo in October 1975 when the Indonesians swept through.Yesterday, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruled that about 250 lines across 42 intelligence "situation reports" written by the Joint Intelligence Organisation should not have been censored.Once the National Archives has removed censoring from the relevant lines, Dr Fernandes will be able to inspect the situation reports, which range from October 1 to December 31, 1975.Senior members of Australia's primary defence intelligence agencies testified in earlier hearings that disclosure of the material would damage national security by disclosing sources and methods of intelligence gathering.Dr Fernandes first applied for the situation reports in late 2007. In 2009, he was granted access to them but they were so heavily censored as to be virtually useless.
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