{"id":49634,"date":"2015-11-22T00:14:43","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T06:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=49634"},"modified":"2015-11-21T16:21:21","modified_gmt":"2015-11-21T23:21:21","slug":"sri-lankas-ex-navy-chief-denies-operating-secret-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/11\/22\/sri-lankas-ex-navy-chief-denies-operating-secret-jail\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka’s ex-navy chief denies operating secret jail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy\u00a0THE WEST AUSTRALIAN<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Colombo (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s former navy chief on Saturday denied operating secret jails during the country’s 37-year ethnic war, local media reported, after UN experts urged an investigation into what they said were torture chambers.<\/p>\n

Retired Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda rejected UN experts’ claims that a secret prison hidden inside the main naval base in the island’s northeast was used to torture minority Tamil prisoners, under his command.<\/p>\n

Karannagoda said the “prison” hidden inside the base in the port city of Trincomalee was actually a British World War II air raid shelter used to house breakaway Tamil rebels collaborating with the military.<\/p>\n

“The navy had no option but to accommodate them in previously unused buildings. We used British-time air raid shelters,” he was quoted by the local English-language Island daily as saying.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t operate torture chambers in Trincomalee.”<\/p>\n

The main Tamil National Alliance opposition demanded in parliament Saturday that Karannagoda be arrested for his alleged involvement, demanding an investigation.<\/p>\n

“Today, he is walking free,” legislator M. A. Sumanthiran said. “How is it possible. He should be arrested and questioned.”<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka’s former regime consistently denied the existence of secret jails, but the new administration which came to power in January, has agreed to investigate.<\/p>\n

A court heard last month that at least 11 Tamil students had been held in the facility illegally between 2008 and 2009 and subsequently killed.<\/p>\n

However, it was the UN panel which for the first time characterised it as a “secret illegal prison”, saying it toured the 12-cell underground jail hidden inside the sprawling naval base in Trincomalee.<\/p>\n

Sri Lankan authorities are already conducting a separate murder investigation into allegations that sailors close to Karannagoda abducted Tamil youngsters and extorted money from their families.<\/p>\n

The main suspect in that case is a close aide of Karannagoda who was made ambassador to Japan by the former regime, but recalled to Sri Lanka by the new government earlier this year.<\/p>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena’s government has promised to punish war criminals and set up a truth commission to help heal the wounds of the conflict that ended in 2009, when the military crushed Tamil rebels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy\u00a0THE WEST AUSTRALIAN Colombo (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s former navy chief on Saturday denied operating secret jails during the country’s 37-year ethnic war, local media reported, after UN experts urged an investigation into what they said were torture chambers. Retired Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda rejected UN experts’ claims that a secret prison hidden inside the main […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}