Col Karuna told that more than 600 policemen were killed 20 years ago

Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, commonly known as Colonel Karuna Amman said, he was in a different part of Sri Lanka at the time. Testifying before a government-appointed commission looking at the Sri Lankan war, blamed Tiger’s leader and intelligence chief for killings.

600 policeman

Colonel Karuna’s defection from the Tamil Tigers or LTTE six years ago is seen as having led to their all-out military defeat in 2009.

Now a vice-president of Sri Lanka’s governing party, he’s been dogged by allegations that he has abused human rights.

He has now told the war commission that more than 600 policemen were indeed killed in eastern Sri Lanka when he headed the LTTE there, something some earlier witnesses alleged.

But Col Karuna said he was then in Jaffna in the north. He said the Tigers’ leader, Prabhakaran, and their intelligence chief were to blame, as they had taken in the police who, he said, were never heard of again.

The former Tiger said he joined the militants as a teenager and received training in India during the time of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Big mistake

Ironically, the Tigers later assassinated her son, Rajiv. He said this was a “big mistake” but added that Indian peackeeping troops sent to the island by Mr Gandhi when he was prime minister had killed many Sri Lankan Tamils and raped many women; he implied that one such woman was used as the suicide bomber who killed Mr Gandhi.

Col Karuna Amman, like other Sri Lankan government members, dismissed the idea that government forces should face war crimes charges.

He said the Tigers, his former comrades, had used 300,000 Tamil civilians as a human shield against the state military, and that the latter’s military campaign was necessary in order to release them.