A trial opens today for seven men accused in the 2002 slayings of two American teachers who worked for a massive US gold mine in Indonesia's easternmost province, a court official said.
But the suspects, all alleged Papuan separatists, insisted they would have to be dragged to court and that they had been tricked into surrendering by US intelligence officers, said their lawyer, Johnson Panjaitan.
"They feel they were lied to by the FBI," he said.
Yani Witra, a court clerk at the Central Jakarta District Court, said a judge had ordered the defendants to appear today for hearings after a two-week delay.
The attack on a convoy of Americans working for New Orleans-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Mine in Papua initially complicated ties between Jakarta and Washington amid suspicions that Indonesian security forces were involved.
Rickey Lynn Spier, 44, of Littleton, Colorado, and Leon Edwin Burgon, 71, of Sun River, Oregon, were killed in the ambush, as was an Indonesian teacher. Eight other employees of the mine were seriously hurt.
The seven suspects claim they turned themselves in last January after FBI agents had promised that they would be tried in the US and allowed to promote their independence struggle, Panjaitan said.
But they were instead arrested by Indonesian police and charged in the shootings, he said, adding his clients vowed to "resist all attempts to bring them to trial" in Indonesia.
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