Sri Lankan cops told to locate 3 ‘Trinco 5’ witnesses

Earlier this month, a court in the eastern town of Trincomalee freed at least 13 policemen charged for the murder of the five students in the town 13 years ago. The Magistrate MHM Hamza released them due to insufficientevidence after the police’s CID had filed charges against them for murder.Among the 36 witnesses named, it was reported to the court that two of the eye witnesses are now in Switzerland and Britain.

The Attorney General in a letter dated July 9 addressed to the police stated that the Magistrate’s order on July 3 does not prevent him from “re-initiating a non summary if new materialis discovered”.

Accordingly, the police has been asked to locate three witnesses and report back to the Attorney General.

The LTTE had run a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The gunning down of the five students at the Trincomalee beach became a high profile human rights abuse case raised by international human rights groups at the UN Human Rights Council resolutions on Sri Lanka’s rights accountability.

The UNHRC had advocated an international investigation with foreign judges and prosecutors to probe rights abuses committed by both the LTTE and the troops.

The parents of the five claimed they fled the country after receiving death threats.