Apart from his camouflage trousers, Eurico Guterres didn't look like a militia leader. With shoulder-length brown hair cascading from a white baseball cap decorated with a Camel cigarette emblem, he could pass for a student or a minor pop star.
We met him in an empty warehouse in Dili, capital of East Timor, often used for pro-Indonesia militia gatherings. He was flanked by three Indonesian policemen in neatly pressed grey uniforms and half a dozen comrades in T-shirts, and spoke to foreign reporters across a black plastic stretcher. On it lay an almost naked corpse, that of a diminutive dark-skinned man with 10 knife wounds in two neat rows across his chest, and his face battered beyond recognition.
The body belonged to 30-year-old Mohammed Ali, a Muslim from Indonesia who had emigrated to Christian East Timor and joined Guterres' militia, and who had been found that morning on the beach, slain by unknown assailants.
It was a situation where one might expect Guterres to call for revenge against pro-independence elements, whom he blamed for the killing. After all, he is the leader of the notorious Aitarak (Thorn) militia, who was heard telling his followers at a rally in Dili on April 17th attended by East Timor's Governor Soarez and senior police officers to "conduct a cleansing of all those who betrayed integration - capture and kill if you need". Following this exhortation, his rag-tag army went on a rampage , killing over 20 unarmed supporters of independence while the police stood by.
But now, over the already sweet-smelling body of his subordinate decomposing in the heat, he urged his followers not to react. "I have given a commitment," he said, thumbs stuck in his belt. "There will be no retaliation". Police officer J.J. Sitompul put a friendly hand on his shoulder and repeated: "From the statement Mr Eurico made, there will be no retribution."
Mr Guterres, it turns out, has been co-opted by the authorities and must now pay lip-service to law and order. Dili police chief Col Timbul Silaen last week appointed him head of civilian security in the capital of the former Portuguese colony. The colonel said he had not been informed of the Aitarak leader committing any crimes. "I have not heard of Eurico Guterres conducting any clean-up operations," he stated, "but if it does happen and laws have been violated, it should be reported to the police."
UN officials in Dili to conduct a referendum on autonomy or independence in August find this hard to swallow. "We are not going to get a climate of security if people who are known to have been violating law and order as militia members are now in some way legitimised in a supposedly protective function," said Mr Ian Martin, head of the UN mission.
An Indonesian spokesman for a taskforce sent to Dili from Jakarta to implement the referendum said yesterday that the police chief had arrested six people for the April 17th killings, but that he had also explained he could not arrest Mr Guterres because: "None of those who were apprehended by him said they had been ordered to kill by Eurico Guterres. Mr Dino Djallal also maintained that the militia leader "is not in charge of security - the police are".
Mr Guterres, he said, had been made co-ordinator of a vigilante group common in Indonesian villages known as Pam Swakarsa. "It is some way of controlling these elements and putting them into some kind of system," he insisted. "There is some accountability in their behaviour. They can't use their position to break the law. That is the logic."
Mr Guterres used the death of his follower nevertheless to stage a show of strength in Dili on Monday, contrary to the terms of the UN agreement on holding the referendum. About 300 militia members roared through the streets on motorcycles to the Muslim cemetery where he was buried.
(An independence leader, Mr David Ximenes, denied that his side had committed the killing.)
Mohammed Ali was not the only victim in recent days of the violence which has plagued East Timor. Yesterday afternoon, in a bamboo hut high on a steep hillside among banana trees overlooking Dili, the tiny body of nine-year-old Jose Manuel Soarez, his stomach and chest ripped to shreds, was laid out on a table beneath a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He had found a hand grenade yesterday morning and hammered on it on a neighbour's wooden porch. It had exploded, killing Jose and two cousins instantly.
The villagers said they believed the grenade was possibly left behind by an army patrol or Mr Guterres's militia conducting the "cleansing" of the town and its environs on April 17th. A small sad crowd of adults and barefoot children gathered at the house to mourn. When asked how they would vote, they replied with one voice: "Independence".