The law of East Timor is based on the laws of Indonesia

Law of Indonesia

Law of Indonesia is based on a civil law system, intermixed with customary law and the Roman Dutch law. Before the Dutch colonization in the sixteenth century, indigenous kingdoms ruled the archipelago independently with their own custom laws, known as adat...

, as was determined by the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

. While laws were originally published only in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, the government began enacting law solely in Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 in 2002. For this reason, East Timorese laws are now written in English, Portuguese, and Indonesian

Indonesian language

Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....

. The law of East Timor is enforced by the National Police

National Police of East Timor

-History:The PNTL was established in May 2002 by the United Nations, before sovereignty was passed to the new state, with a mandate to provide security and maintain law and order throughout the country, and to enable the rapid development of a credible, professional and impartial police service...

, established in 2002. One of the most important events in the history of the law of East Timor was the creation of the Special Panels of the Dili District Court

Special Panels of the Dili District Court

The Special Panels of the Dili District Court was the hybrid international–East Timorese tribunal that was created in 2000 by the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor to try cases of "serious criminal offences" — including murder, rape, and torture — which took place in East...

, which attempted to deal with crime

Crime

Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...

s such as murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

, rape

Rape

Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

, and torture

Torture

Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...

which took place in 1999. The panels sat from 2000 to 2006.