JAKARTA, May 7 (AFP) - Indonesian soldiers were paid by their superiors to murder Papuan independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay last year, members of a government-appointed commission investigating the killing said Tuesday.

Three members of the army's special forces Kopassus were aided by "a number of" lower-ranking soldiers to kill Eluay, said John Ibo and Karel Phil Erari, members of the National Investigation Commission, as quoted by the official Antara news agency.

Erari said the soldiers were paid by their superiors to execute Eluay.

The three Kopassus officers are in detention in Jakarta in connection with the murder.

Ibo and Erari said the investigators' next task was to find out who had ordered the killing. 

Military police have said no order was ever issued for Eluay to be killed.

Eluay was found murdered on November 11. He had been abducted the previous evening by an unidentified group as he drove home from a celebration hosted by the Tribuana task force on the outskirts of the provincial capital Jayapura.

Erari said witnesses' testimonies indicate that the Tribuana task force, whose members are mostly from Kopassus, had been instrumental in the murder.

The three Kopassus officers have been detained at the national military police headquarters since April 10 and if convicted of murder face a maximum 15 years in jail.

The national commission has said that six soldiers are suspected of involvement -- the three detained officers and three non-commissioned officers.

A low-level armed struggle for independence in Papua began after the Dutch ceded control of the resource-rich territory to Indonesia in 1963. Eluay had led the Papua Presidium, a pro-independence organisation that advocated peaceful pressure for separation.

Anger in the territory at the central government has been fuelled by unpunished extra-judicial killings and Jakarta's perceived exploitation of its rich natural resources.

The province, formerly known as Irian Jaya, was renamed Papua this year under an autonomy law and was promised a much greater share of revenue from natural resources.