Australian police have announced a war crimes investigation into killing of five foreign journalists by Indonesian forces in East Timor in 1975. The journalists, known as the Balibo Five, were killed in the East Timorese village of Balibo on the eve of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, then Portuguese Timor. In 2007, an Australian coroner investigating the matter ruled that the five were killed in order to prevent news of the impending invasion from leaking out.

However, Jakarta claims that the journalists, two Australians, two British nationals and a New Zealander, were accidentally caught in the crossfire in a battle between Indonesian troops and East Timorese Fretilin rebels.

East Timor President José Ramos-Horta, who was a rebel leader at the time of the Indonesian invasion, investigated the deaths and said that at least one of the journalists was, "brutally, and brutally tortured".

Jakarta's version of events suffered another blow recently with the release of the film Balibo, which depicted the deaths of the journalists.

Foto: Indonesische militairen (Studio Titus) www.flickr.com/photos/30282506@N04/