Charles Haviland BBC Colombo

Nanda Godage, a former Sri Lankan ambassador to the European Union, told the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that at least two thousand young Tamils had been in detention for years on suspicion of involvement with the Tamil Tigers or LTTE.

These were separate from several thousand held in camps since the end of the fighting last year.

They had been failed by the legal system, he alleged.

By holding them in this way, he charged, the Sri Lankan state was in danger of “breeding many more Prabhakarans” – a reference to Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE rebels who met his death as the war ended.

"Angry"

Mr Godage told the BBC he was especially “angry” about 500 young people held purely on suspicion in a Colombo jail, Welikada, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

If there was no evidence against them and the others, he said, they should be freed – though he acknowledged that the security of the state was vital.

He told the panel of a case he said was typical – a Tamil engineer who admitted to the police that he’d given money to the Tigers while working in the UK.

The man had been more than a year in prison despite explaining that many Tamils abroad were forced to make such donations.

Forgotten detainees

The retired diplomat said some top officials sympathised with these detainees but that complex bureaucracy meant they were forgotten about.

Former LTTE members or suspects who are still alive are receiving mixed treatment in Sri Lanka. The most senior of them, nicknamed KP, is nominally detained but is cooperating with the government in building links with the Tamil diaspora.

Another senior member, Velayutham Dayanidhi, better known as Daya Master has just told the BBC that he’s helping to run a television station in the north while out on bail from a court case.