Executions Spark Indonesian Violence

Violence erupted across several parts of eastern Indonesia today after three Christians were executed for leading attacks on Muslims during a sectarian conflict on Sulawesi island in 2000.

A prison in Atambua, in West Timor, the home of one of the militants, was stormed and 200 men escaped and attacked the prosecutors' office. On Flores, where the other two were born, police fired warning shots to save a parliament building from a mob. Protesters blocked roads and torched buildings elsewhere.

In the Poso district of Sulawesi, where the conflict took place in 2000 to 2001, gangs burnt cars and police posts. No one was killed in the violence but several people were injured.

Indonesia's vice-president, Jusuf Kalla, said the executions should be regarded as a legal and not a sectarian issue. Fabianus Tibo, Marinus Riwu and Dominggus Silva were executed at 1.45am in Palu, central Sulawesi. They were sentenced to death in 2001 for leading an attack on an Islamic boarding school in which some 200 people were killed.

They had been scheduled to die in August but the executions were postponed after appeals by Pope Benedict XVI and thousands of Indonesians.

The Vatican said today news of the men's deaths was "sad and painful". The European Union issued a strong condemnation. Diplomats and rights groups have said the men's trial was flawed, with prosecutors and judges being repeatedly intimidated by large Muslim mobs and the defence lawyers receiving death threats.

Analysts say the deaths could open the way for the execution of the three Islamist terrorists sentenced to death for their roles in the 2002 Bali bombing in which 202 people were killed.