Ayoung East Timorese man, Domingos da Silva, who had assisted a German television crew was so severely beaten by plainclothes security officials that his face was "unrecognizable." The beating occurred when Domingos took the initiative of explaining to military authorities why had helped the German crew out of the chaos. A member of the German crew who directly witnessed the beating, provided Amnesty International with the following account of the incident:

After filming this event, we desperately tried to get out.but this was impossible because there was a fence around the cathedral and soldiers surrounded the area. Our attempts were watched by a young Timorese, who offered to help us out of there are bring us safely back to our hotel. His only condition: "Let us, after calm is restored, go together to the army headquarters and explain to the officers that I only helped you because of humanitarian and not political reasons. We discussed this request several times and eventually agreed because the young man, who was erribly scared that the secret police had taken photographs of him, insisted. We approached the headquarters and the young man tried to explain the case, assisted by us, to the officers. But from the first moment he did not have a single chance.

After aggressive verbal reactions by the soldiers he was taken by plainclothes agents and severely beaten up and kicked by these terrible men, who really reacted in a fascist manner. After eight to ten minutes we succeeded to pull our bleeding companion out of the struggle and bring him, followed by a stone-throwing gang of agents, to our hotel. There we informed a Swiss doctor from the Red Cross, who is now taking care of him.

A correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) who saw Domingos as he arrived at the hotel, reported that:

He has blood streaming down his back and one side of his face is so swollen it's unrecognizable. They thrashed the living daylights out of him - he owes his life to the German crew who seized him and dragged him away from the police as they were beating him.

[BBC World Service, News Hour, 18 November 1994.]
[Newsgroups-soc.rights.human]