UN rapporteur urges independent war crimes probe in Sri Lanka

Jan 7, 2010, 18:04 GMT

New York - An independent war crimes investigation should be conducted into last year's fighting between Sri Lanka and Tamil Tiger rebels, during which some rebels were summarily executed, the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial or arbitrary executions said Thursday.

Philip Alston said a videotape released by British Channel 4 television last year was determined to be authentic by three experts in forensic pathology, forensic video analysis and firearm evidence hired by his office.

The tape alleged that some Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels were executed by Sri Lankan soldiers in the final phase of the conflict that ended in May with a government victory.

The Sri Lankan government said last year after the videotape was released that it was fake, a conclusion also arrived at by four experts it hired. Alston hired experts to counter Sri Lanka's claim that the tape was fabricated.

Alston said at UN headquarters in New York that his independent experts concluded the videotape was authentic, prompting him to call for an investigation into whether war crimes were committed.

The tape, which he said was taken by an unidentified Sri Lankan soldier apparently with a cell phone, showed the Tamil rebels were naked, bound and blindfolded when executed.

'Given these conclusions, and in light of the persistent flow of other allegations of extrajudicial executions by both sides during the closing phases of the war against the LTTE, I call for the establishment of an independent inquiry to carry out an impartial investigation into war crimes and other grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law allegedly committed in Sri Lanka,' said Alston, who is a law professor at the New York University School of Law.

Alston's experts, all US-based, reviewed the tape and concluded that the study made by the Sri Lankan experts was 'inaccurate or faulty.'

Jeff Spivack, one of the three US experts who worked for the Las Vegas metropolitan police department and was a former US Air Force laboratory specialist, said the videotape had properties that are 'entirely consistent with multimedia files produced by a wide variety of mobile phones with video recording capability.'

He said he could not find any commercially available software capable of altering or deleting the contents of the videotape.