Sri Lanka has accused the United Nations of a "crusade" to drag it before war crimes tribunals after it came under new pressure over a video that allegedly shows its troops executing prisoners.
WATCH the Channel 4 News report. Warning: this video contains disturbing images
UN human rights envoy Philip Alston concluded Thursday that video footage allegedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing unarmed Tamil Tiger rebels last year was authentic and urged Colombo to accept an impartial probe.
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The footage was shot during the final stages of the Sri Lankan army's battle against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), according to the group that distributed it.
Sri Lanka's Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, failed to follow "due process" in announcing that the disputed video was genuine.
"Philip Alston is on a crusade of his own to force an international (war crimes) inquiry against Sri Lanka," Samarasinghe told AFP. "We object to the procedure he followed. He should have shared his information with us first."
Samarasinghe insisted that Colombo was convinced the video had been altered.
"As far as we are concerned, the video is not genuine and it has been doctored," Samarasinghe said.
Alston said the authenticity of the video was established by three US-based independent, qualified experts he had commissioned to conduct an impartial evaluation after four Sri Lankan specialists concluded it was a fake.
The footage shows a man dressed in army uniform shooting a naked, bound and blindfolded man in the back of the head, while the bodies of eight others can be seen nearby in a muddy field.
It was not clear if the dead were Tiger rebels or civilians. A 10th man was also shot in the same way towards the end of the video with men in the background gloating over the killings.
Sri Lankan authorities have resisted international calls for a war crimes investigation after the United Nations alleged more than 7,000 civilians had been killed during the first four months of 2009 alone.
The Tamil rebels were finally vanquished last May after nearly four decades of ethnic bloodshed that left between 80,000 and 100,000 people dead.
The government victory ended the LTTE's four-decade struggle for an independent Tamil homeland, one of Asia's longest-running ethnic conflicts.
