UN favours international judges in Sri Lanka war crimes court

Dealing a blow to Sri Lanka's insistence on a purely domestic probe, the UN rights body today favoured creation of a special hybrid court including international judges to investigate the alleged war crimes by troops during the decades-long battle especially in the final phase to eliminate the LTTE in 2009.
The nearly 300-page report by UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein also indicted the LTTE for killing Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese civilians, through indiscriminate suicide bombings and mine attacks, as well as assassinations of individuals including public officials, academics and dissenting Tamil political figures.
Releasing the long-awaited report detailing "horrific abuses" committed during Sri Lanka's civil war that ended in 2009, Zeid said, "A purely domestic court procedure will have no chance of overcoming widespread and justifiable suspicions fuelled by decades of violations, malpractice and broken promises."

Sri Lankan government has been resisting foreign probe and has promised a fair probe with truth and reconciliation commission on the lines of South Africa.
"The levels of mistrust in state authorities and institutions by broad segments of Sri Lankan society should not be underestimated," Zeid warned and called for creating "a hybrid special court, integrating international judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators."
"Our investigation has laid bare the horrific level of violations and abuses that occurred in Sri Lanka, including indiscriminate shelling, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, harrowing accounts of torture and sexual violence, recruitment of children and other grave crimes," the report said.

"Numerous unlawful killings between 2002 and 2011, were allegedly committed by both parties, as well as by paramilitary groups linked to the security forces," said the report as the US prepares to co-sponsor a resolution at the UNHRC favouring a domestic probe.

"Tamil politicians, humanitarian workers, journalists and ordinary civilians were among the alleged victims of Sri Lankan security forces and associated paramilitaries," the report said.
"There appear to have been discernible patterns of killings, for instance, in the vicinity of security force checkpoints and military bases, and also of extrajudicial killings of individuals while in the custody of security forces, including people who were captured or surrendered at the end of the conflict," it said.

One shocking finding of the investigation was the extent to which sexual violence was committed against detainees, often extremely brutally, by the Sri Lankan security forces, with men as likely to be victims as women.