Sri Lanka finds torture cells but rebels deny it

Colombo, Jan 16: Sri Lankan security forces have found torture cells at a captured camp of the Tamil Tiger rebels in the restive east, the military said today, but the rebels dismissed the accusation as lies.

The foes have repeatedly accused each other of widespread human rights violations amid a new chapter in the island's two-decade civil war.

The military posted photographs on its official Web site www.nationalsecurity.lk overnight showing small concrete cells with kennel-like iron grills which it said were used to keep rebel deserters and informants.

''We have captured 15 camps so far, some even with torture chambers.'' said military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe. ''Yesterday also the Special Task Force cleared two more bases. One is a women's camp and the other one is a training base.'' He said the chambers were empty when the camps in the eastern district of Ampara, where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) control large pockets of jungle, were overrun this month.

Such cells have previously been found at other rebel camps in the north and east, he added.

The military also said the commandos had found cannabis crop and the remains of elephants which suggested they were killed for their tusks.

The Tigers laughed off the accusations, saying they didn't have any bases in the area and denied torture cells existed anywhere in areas held by them.

''The government is desperately in need of some successful stories ... They may have walked in to some huts and not bases, because our bases are far from there,'' rebel military spokesman Rasiah Ilanthiraiyan said by telephone from the Tigers' northern stronghold.

''When coming to accuse the LTTE they make use of their imaginary powers,'' he added. ''In Ampara we operate mainly in guerrilla mode and our real bases are safe and sound.'' He said the photograph of the alleged chambers could have been taken anywhere.

Nordic truce monitors said they had not visited the site of the overrun camps, and it was not immediately possible to independently confirm either side's claims.

Samarasinghe said sporadic shelling continued around the rebel-held town of Vakarai in the northeastern district of Trincomalee, where an estimated 10,000-15,000 civilians are trapped in the crossfire after around 20,000 others fled to government areas in recent weeks.

In a separate incident in northern Vanuniya district, two policemen were killed in a suspected rebel ambush with a roadside bomb on Tuesday, the latest in a litany of such deadly attacks.

The Tigers vowed to resume their fight for an independent state for minority Tamils in the north and east after the government rejected their demands for a separate homeland, and analysts fear a new chapter in a war that has killed more than 67,000 people since 1983 could escalate.

REUTERS

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