JOURNALISTS 'MURDERED' IN E TIMOR!

By Nick Bryant - BBC News, Sydney.

Relatives of the journalists were present for the judgement. A coroner in Sydney has ruled that five Australian-based journalists, known as the Balibo Five, were deliberately killed in East Timor in 1975.
The deputy coroner of New South Wales, Dorelle Pinch, said there was enough evidence to constitute a war crime.
She said two Australians, two Britons and a New Zealander were killed by Indonesian special forces to stop them exposing the invasion of East Timor.
Official Indonesian reports always said they were killed in crossfire.
For more than three decades, the families of the Balibo Five have sought to correct the historical record and to prove that the newsmen were executed rather than accidentally killed in the heat of battle.
Now, they have finally been vindicated.
The court found that Britons Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, Australians Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart, and New Zealander Gary Cunningham were deliberately shot or stabbed.

Ms Pinch found that members of the Indonesian special forces were acting on orders of their commanding officer to prevent the journalists revealing their participation in the attack on Balibo in East Timor.
She said that war crimes as defined by Australian law may have been committed, law and pledged to refer the case to the country's attorney-general, who has the jurisdiction to mount a prosecution.
But on the question of whether the Australian authorities were forewarned that the journalists were about to be killed, she said all the evidence was to the contrary.
In Jakarta, a spokesman for the Indonesian foreign ministry said that the coroner's findings would not change its official account of the killings.

BBC NEWS REPORT.