A highly placed Navy official said yesterday that the secret torture camp the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) is referring to could be the one commander Sampath Munasinghe, the personal bodyguard of the former Navy commander retired Admiral Wasantha Karannagodahad kept Tamil youth who were abducted in Colombo.
The official said that he had no-knowledge of three Navy officers being arrested in connection with the recent revelations made by the UN working group, as claimed by some media
Contrary to this notion the officer said that such torture chambers which existed during previous regimes time were discovered much earlier and was revealed in the media itself. The champers were used to accommodate the Karuna-led ex LTTE militants.
“The way the team presented facts before the media indicates that either they were highly excited about what they thought was a new finding or it demonstrates their lack of foresight and experience about local ground realities” he added.
The Navy official said that these torture chambers did not exist after 2011.
Meanwhile the Tamil National Alliance claims that torture camps had existed in Sri Lanka long after 2010. The secret camp named “Gota” located within the Trincomalee Naval Base, had separately held 700 Tamils and 35 Tamil families, the TNA had said earlier.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had earlier said a couple off months back “after we took over the government, there are no secret camps. I cannot speak for the time before that”.
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