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Nairn, this country's preeminent human-rights investigative reporter, did not get his stuff back. He is still locked up under armed Indonesian guard. And Thursday night, I learned from U.S. State Department officials in Jakarta that Indonesia's regime -- whose brutality the world has gotten a glimpse of in East Timor over the last few weeks -- plans a criminal show trial of Nairn that could place him in prison there for 10 years.

In the early morning hours last Sunday, Nairn was walking the streets of Dili taking notes. Most reporters had evacuated East Timor days earlier, fleeing the reign of terror by government-backed militias opposed to East Timor's independence vote. But Nairn, who once had his skull cracked by Indonesian soldiers in these same streets, and who had entered the country in defiance of an official order barring him as a security threat, decided to remain, sleeping in the U.N. compound and dodging from burned-out house to burned-out house. He saw hacked bodies piled in the streets, a city reduced to ruins. Suddenly he was surrounded by an armed militia gang, which took him into custody. They took him to Dili's military barracks, where, he told me, the militias mingled freely and jovially with the soldiers supposed to police them.

Citizens slip across national boundaries all the time. When they are caught, they are deported. When Nairn was picked up in Dili last week, most of his friends thought that would happen. He was treated relatively well, allowed to retain his cellular phone. He even gave a long interview to public television's "Newshour," describing what he saw on Dili's streets.

But the detention dragged on. He was transferred under military guard to a holding center in West Timor, home base of those same furious militias who torched Dili and hacked the East Timorese with machetes. Friday, the other shoe dropped: He was informed that the police would commence a criminal prosecution. He should get a lawyer and an interpreter. He will soon be transferred to the custody of police and a restrictive criminal jail, and probably lose his telephone lifeline.

The investigation (not that there is anything to investigate, since Nairn freely admits he entered the country in defiance of his ban) will go on for two months or more. Then he will go on trial, for "crimes" -- most likely violation of immigration laws, though exactly what he will be charged with remains unclear -- that could earn him 10 years in one of the most brutal prison systems in Asia. When I asked a State Department official what rights Allan would have if he is charged, he replied with silence, then added: "Well, this is Indonesia."

While the prosecution seems driven by regional authorities responsible for Timor, informed U.S. officials believe it would not be moving forward without approval from the highest levels of government, including Justice Minister Muladi. President B.J. Habibie and Gen. Wiranto of the military seem to see prosecution of Nairn as a way to appease nationalists angry over losing East Timor.

State Department and National Security Council staffers I have spoken with hoped that gentle diplomacy would free him and for several days kept a low profile -- a little like the State Department officials portrayed in the film "Missing," about Americans caught up in the violent Chilean coup of 1973. But as one of them put it to me, none of the buttons they pushed worked, and "this has become a political matter." National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer says that "we are in close contact" with Nairn, that Ambassador Roy Stapleton is meeting with Indonesian cabinet officials and that "we hope Indonesia will continue to uphold its obligations under international human rights conventions."

But the most influential voices -- those of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and President Clinton, for instance -- have yet to be heard while an American journalist languishes under Indonesian guard. If American officials hoped "quiet diplomacy" would work, so far they have been mistaken.

As yet, no American newspaper has assigned its own reporter to cover Nairn's detention (though the Washington Post ran a brief Reuters dispatch). A few voices are beginning to speak up, however. Today more than 60 influential writers, academics and politicians -- including Sens. Russ Feingold and Paul Wellstone, Reps. Jim McGovern and Cynthia McKinney, playwright Harold Pinter, author Mary Gordon and scholar Noam Chomsky -- signed a letter to Albright urging the State Department to make Nairn's case a higher priority. It's a letter I was honored to participate in.

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