Govt. prevented from full assesment of C4 video due to blurred quality

Speaking to the UN Human Rights Council today, Sri Lanka’s representative and Attorney General Mohan Pieris said the Government had been precluded from making a full assessment of the Channel 4 video because of the blurred quality of the images, the UN News Center reports.

He said it was important not to rush to conclusions, noting that media outlets, human rights defenders and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were often quick to report on incidents during conflicts which result in the deaths of civilians without finding out the legal basis for military operations.

An independent United Nations human rights expert has called on Sri Lankan authorities to thoroughly investigate the apparent execution of several men by Government soldiers, saying a disputed video of the incident seems to be authentic.

Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, described the killings shown on the video – whose authenticity has been contested by the Sri Lankan Government – as “textbook examples of extrajudicial executions.”

In the video, which first appeared on British television, naked men are shown being placed with their hands behind their backs. They are then shot through the head from behind.

“Our findings are that these executions really took place and that has to be investigated further to establish who did it and what was the context,” Mr. Heyns said in an interview yesterday, a day before he presented his findings in Geneva.

“I do think a broader process is necessary to establish whether these are crimes against humanity [or] possibly war crimes that took place,” he said, adding it was important to determine if the killings were part of wider pattern of systematic attacks against civilians or prisoners of war.

In his report to the UN Human Rights Council he said that “what is reflected in the extended video are crimes of the highest order – definitive war crimes,” although he stressed that further investigations need to be carried out.

Mr. Heyns said experts in forensics, medicine, ballistics and video and audio concluded that the executions depicted in the video did take place, reflecting the findings last year of his predecessor, Philip Alston.