The Serious Crimes Unit was the official title given to an

elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. D ...

unit of

International Police The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...

investigator Investigator may refer to: Occupations Government and law * Detective, a person who investigates crimes, can be a rank and job in a police department, state or federal employee, or a civilian called a private detective * Inspector, a police rank ...

s during the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

1999 to 2004 mission in

East Timor East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-weste ...

. The unit ultimately took over the investigation of

Human Rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

violations alleged to have been committed in East Timor by

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

n and pro-Indonesian military forces during 1999, from the UN Mandate that began in February, 1999. The unit's cases were tried before the

Special Panels of the Dili District Court The Special Panels for Serious Crimes (also called the East Timor Tribunal) was the hybrid international–East Timorese tribunal that was created in 2000 by the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) to try cases of "ser ...

. Many of the cases that were eventually handled by this unit included cases previously overseen by the

UNTAET Crime Scene Detachment The UNTAET Crime Scene Detachment was the common title for an elite investigative unit created in the war-torn and newly liberated country of East Timor in November 1999, under the direction of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East ...

. One member of that squad of investigators, Karl Clark, played an intricate part in the Serious Crimes Unit investigations, and its eventual

prosecution A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal trial ...

of war crimes suspects. From 20 May 2002 it was part of the

United Nations Mission of Support to East Timor The United Nations Mission of Support to East Timor (UNMISET) lasted from 20 May 2002 to 20 May 2005, when it was replaced by United Nations Office in Timor Leste (UNOTIL). It was established when East Timor became an internationally recognised ind ...

and was scheduled to complete its investigations by the end of the year, after which it would continue to provide assistance to prosecutors. At the end of the UNMISET mandate the Serious Crimes Unit was to preserve a complete copy of its records. For part of its time the office was under-staffed, and in 2006 there was a wave of looting which destroyed some of the evidence against high Indonesian officials and scattered forensic evidence (human body parts) over the ground.{{cite news, title=Serious Crimes Unit office looted in Dili, date=31 May 2006, url=http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2006/s1652102.htm, author=Anne Barker, publisher=ABC Online, accessdate=2007-09-04

References

Law enforcement units Government of East Timor