Last-second news: A breaking story from the Associated Press wires dated June 24 says Nessen has turned himself in. According to the report, "witnesses said he was alone when he walked out of a swamp and surrendered" and was "put into an armoured vehicle and taken away to an undisclosed location."

Missing, presumed alive
Journalist Billy Nessen tries to escape the brutal Indonesian army.

By A.C. Thompson

WILLIAM "Billy" Nessen's friends say he's blessed with an uncanny ability to dodge bullets and elude harm. So maybe the 46-year-old freelance war correspondent will emerge from his latest adventure unscathed – though it's not looking so hot for the former Bay Area resident and occasional San Francisco Chronicle stringer.

At press time Nessen was somewhere in the mountainous jungles of the Indonesian province of Aceh, possibly sick and traveling covertly with an armed band of rebels while the Indonesian army hunted him.

Nessen has been in war-wrecked Aceh, working on a book and video documentary, since peace talks between the GAM, or Free Aceh Movement guerrillas, and the Indonesian army broke down in May.

The army, which is autonomous of the Indonesian government and notorious for its brutality, gave Nessen a deadline of June 14 to clear out of rebel territory and turn himself in to soldiers for interrogation. Nessen balked, saying the army had opened fire when he tried to surrender earlier. In a June 16 interview with the Sidney Morning Herald, he said, "I am not going to turn myself in. My fear is of being shot, tortured, beaten and arrested and held indefinitely in a black hole."

The military – which massacred hundreds of thousands of alleged communists during the 1960s – is doing little to allay his fears. In one Asian press report, an Indonesian general was quoted as telling Nessen, "It's my responsibility to arrest you.... If you don't want to be shot, tell us your position," while in another news story published last week a different general suggested Nessen was a spy – a charge that can carry the death penalty.

Some observers suggest the army wants to force Nessen to reveal any information he may have about the rebels' forces and positions.

Interviewed via cell phone from an undisclosed location, Nessen's Aceh-born wife, Shadia Marhaban, told me she'd heard from him recently and that she fears he's suffering from malaria.

"They're accusing Billy of sympathizing with the struggle and not really being a journalist," she said. "It's really crazy. He's a journalist, and we want safe passage for him out of Indonesia immediately."

"The Indonesian military has a horrific record of attacks on civilians," Human Rights Watch deputy program director Joe Saunders told me, noting a particularly grisly case he investigated involving the murder of three human rights workers in Aceh in 2000. However, he said, Nessen's U.S. citizenship may save him. "Westerners," Saunders said, "have not commonly been targets."

In a June 10 letter to Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it was "deeply concerned" about Nessen's safety, and sources say the group has sent a delegate to Jakarta to lobby the U.S. diplomatic delegation on his behalf.

But Saunders is cynical about how much effort the Bush administration will put into saving Nessen. The Bushies, he said, "are willing to turn a blind eye to what's going on in places like Aceh and Papua. They want to be on Indonesia's good side because they want their help in the war on terror."

Kurt Biddle, coordinator of Berkeley's Indonesia Human Rights Network, isn't hopeful about the journo's chances of getting a fair trial should he be brought up on criminal charges. "The justice system is still skewed, even since Indonesia got rid of its dictator and moved toward democracy in '98."

A few hours before my deadline, when I tried to contact the Nessen directly, I got a message saying his satellite phone was "not active or out of coverage area." That could mean he's been taken hostage by the military. Or it could mean that he's turned off his phone and gone deep, deep into the jungle.

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