JAKARTA -- A senior UN refugee official rapped Indonesian legal authorities Monday for failing to properly punish the "cold-blooded murder" of three of its staff. But Soren Jessen-Petersen, Assistant United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said Jakarta, in a "fundamental policy change," now clearly wanted the return of an estimated 80,000 East Timorese refugees from Indonesian West Timor. Jessen-Petersen, speaking at the end of an eight-day visit to Jakarta and West and East Timor, said he was "very disturbed and very distressed" that the High Court had now confirmed "ridiculously low sentences" on those convicted in connection with the murders. In September 2000 a mob of frenzied East Timorese militiamen stoned, stabbed and beat to death the three unarmed UNHCR workers -- an American, a Croatian and an Ethiopian -- in the border town of Atambua in Indonesian West Timor. Their bodies were set on fire. A Jakarta court in may found six men not guilty of their murder and instead convicted them of inciting mob violence. It sentenced them to jail terms of between 10 and 20 months, AFP reported. Jessen-Petersen told a press conference he raised the case of "cold-blooded murder" with the Attorney-General M.A. Rachman and also the sentences, which he called a "mockery of justice." "I was very disturbed by what I heard. The concerted impression we got was that there was very little he could do (about the confirmation of sentence). "We don't agree with that. We believe it is the responsibility of the Indonesian authorities to take this all the way, to see that justice is done," Jessen-Petersen said. "The impression we got from that meeting is that is not happening ... so among many, many very encouraging meetings with the authorities, there was (that) one disturbing meeting with the attorney-general." An estimated quarter of a million people fled or were forced into West Timor in the wake of East Timor's overwhelming vote on august 30, 1999, for independence after 24 years of enforced Indonesian rule. Local pro-Jakarta militias, backed by the Indonesian military, unleashed a wave of killing and destruction in response. Militia leaders in West Timor camps have been preventing many refugees from returning. After the murders of its staff the UNHCR pulled out of West Timor. Jessen-Petersen said it would not re-open a full-time office without the signing of a memorandum of understanding on security between the United Nations and the Indonesian government.