AN East Lancashire journalist with a reputation for reporting from some of the world's most dangerous warzones has finally returned from trouble-torn East Timor.

Freelance Christopher Wenner, who covered the Indonesian conflict for ITN, Channel 4 News and The Times newspaper, was one of the last journalists to leave the embattled UN compound in the ravaged capital of Dili.

Mr Wenner, a former Stonyhurst College pupil who has homes in Slaidburn and London, fled to the hills with freedom fighters after breaking out of the compound and is now hoping to spend some time with his wife Liz and two sons, Ben, 14, and 10-year-old Barnaby.

He said: "I would like to stay put for a couple of months and concentrate on one or two things here but there is trouble in Chechnya.

"It is a place I feel very strongly about and if nobody else can get in to report from there I may feel I should do and go."

Mr Wenner was one of the first Western journalists to report from East Timor and has a reputation for breaking stories in trouble spots.

He originally travelled there with his son Ben but got the teenager on a flight home when trouble broke out.

He said: "I had to get Ben home when things started exploding and a lot of bad things starting happening.

"He'd come out during his school holiday and had a very interesting time.

He was interrogated a couple of times and we took part in what he calls "a James Bond chase". "He is certainly more politically aware now but I witnessed massacres, killing and torturing of people.

"Most recently I filed reports on a huge massacre in Timor where between 400 and 800 people were killed, including priests.

"Most were women and children but luckily I didn't see the bodies because they had been cleaned up. "One of the most harrowing scenes was when their fathers came down from the hills to find themselves confronted by this scene.

"They had left their families in the care of the local priests, thinking they would be safe, and they collapsed in grief."

Mr Wenner, who began his working life as an actor more than 20 years ago, said he feels privileged to be able to report from such scenes.

He went on: "It's not that I like major conflict and war because it is usually a pretty ugly scene but I do feel privileged in the sense that they are big stories that confront people with big choices about their lives.

"I try to tell stories about real people in a way that people in Britain can relate to on a human level."

But constant travelling in some of the most remote spots in the world can take it's toll on Mr Wenner's family life.

During his trip to East Timor he was out of contact for a number of weeks.

He said: "It can be very hard when I cannot be contacted and all of a sudden things blow up.

"My wife didn't know where we were and it was very worrying for her."

Mrs Wenner, a television producer, said: "I am very relieved Christopher has returned home safe and sound. I know he has seen some terrible things in Indonesia. He has been in dangerous places before but they were particularly bad over there.

"He is an amazing man and I am very proud of him."

Mr Wenner, who has also reported from El Salvador, Beirut and Chechnya, won an award in 1994 for covering a massacre in Timor and has recently written a screenplay based there.

His father is ex-diplomat and author Michael Wenner and his sister-in-law is Debbie Horsfield, who co-wrote and directed the recent BBC TV drama Sex, Chips and Rock 'n' Roll.

He added: "I like to tell stories about people on a human level and when you look at it like that Debbie and I are not that different."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.