Timor-Leste: Xanana e o ganster sem coração

The Sunday Age Sunday March 16, 2008 Tom Hyland A meeting between East Timor's Prime Minister and a standover man into gambling and land grabs has raised questions, writes Tom Hyland. HE HAS one eye, one arm and, they say, no heart. He has powerful connections, a bad reputation, what's known in crime reporting as a "colourful background", and money to invest. His name is Hercules Rosario Marcal, but in Indonesia, where he lives, and East Timor, the birthplace he wants to return to, he's always referred to as just Hercules. He has been feted on a Jakarta television talk show and the Indonesian press calls him the "king of the gangsters". Hercules is a standover man who made his name running protection rackets extorting money from taxi drivers and small stallholders in Jakarta. He's into gambling and prostitution and land grabs. Until recently he was close to senior generals in the Indonesian military. When the press upsets him, he sends his "boys" along to demand a "clarification" by bashing the offending reporters. So what was Hercules doing back in East Timor on January 21? And why did Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao and other senior government ministers meet him? He was in Dili ostensibly as part of an Indonesian business delegation that included respected - and dubious - Indonesian business figures. He told reporters he was keen to invest in a five-star hotel and elite housing developments in one of the world's poorest countries. But his visit, and Gusmao's meeting with him, have raised questions among local politicians and international observers. Given his record, the red carpet treatment raises doubts, at the very least, about the judgement of his official hosts. More disturbing are rumours that his visit may be linked to the attempted assassination three weeks later of President Jose Ramos Horta. While the timing may be entirely coincidental, senior political figures in Dili want Hercules to be included in an international investigation of the February 11 attack. Hercules, a short, intense, wiry man aged about 48, comes from the Ainaro district south of Dili. His father, a farmer, and his mother were killed in an Indonesian bombardment in 1978, according to a report by East Timor's reconciliation commission. During the Indonesian occupation, he served as an "operations assistant" for the Indonesian army, carrying soldiers' equipment and supplies, sometimes into battle. He was wounded in a clash with independence guerillas, losing his right eye and most of his right arm. Here his history coincides with that of other "colourful" characters from East Timor's tortured recent past. Army rebel Alfredo Reinado, who was killed in the attack on Ramos Horta, also served as an operations assistant. So did the notorious pro-Indonesian militia leader Eurico Guterres, who was prominent in the campaign to disrupt the 1999 independence referendum. By the early 1990s, Hercules was living in Jakarta at the house of an army major-general who had served in East Timor as an intelligence officer in the Indonesian special forces, Kopassus. In 1999, according to the reconciliation commission report, this officer returned to Dili as army representative on the Indonesian Government taskforce "assisting" the UN during the referendum campaign. The commission does not name him, but the army representative on the taskforce was Major-General Zacky Anwar Makarim, a former Kopassus intelligence officer. In 2003, a UN war crimes panel charged Makarim with crimes against humanity for orchestrating the campaign to undermine the referendum in which about 1500 people were killed. Jakarta has refused to put him on trial, or extradite him. Hercules is widely assumed to have had other senior military patrons, including former Kopassus commander Prabowo Subianto, son-in-law of the former dictator Suharto.