Sander Thoenes , who was brutally killed on Tuesday in Dili, the capital of East Timor, on an assignment for the Financial Times, was a foreign correspondent of outstanding potential, driven by a joyful natural curiosity and a determination to get to the bottom of the story.

He had been reporting from Indonesia, a country which had always fascinated him, for the past two years, after starting his journalistic career in Moscow. Aged 30, he had already been a cub reporter on the Moscow Times, a stringer for US News and World Report in Russia, and FT correspondent in Central Asia, before he arrived in Jakarta. He spoke fluent Russian and Bahasa Indonesia, the national language, as well as being virtually bilingual in English and Dutch.