Napalese war criminal faces torture charges in UK

[TamilNet, Saturday, 05 January 2013, 13:54 GMT]
Colonel Kumar Lama, a 46-year-old officer, currently seconded to the UN, was held at his East Sussex home by Metropolitan Police officers on Thursday, charged with intentionally "inflicting severe pain or suffering" as a public official on two separate individuals, BBC reported. "This encouraging development puts on notice persumptive war-criminals from Sri lanka who have participated or commanded extra-judicial killings, torture of civilians, and killings of surrendees, all qualifying as war-crimes during a State sanctioned massacre that comes perilously close to genocide, on visiting UK, or other European Countries where the Courts exercise Universal jurisdiction for such crimes," a spokesperson for Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) said. 

• Section 134: Criminal Justice Act 1988

Detectives with specialist experience of war crimes arrested the officer under Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act, a law that defines torture as a "universal jurisdiction" crime, BBC said.

• Arrest warrants - Universal Jurisdiction

"While Lama's charges are only on two torture incidents, miniscule compared to the egregious crimes committed by Sri Lanka's ex-Commanders and rulers holding high positions, British Police had no qualms in arresting the Colonel, the arrest sends a powerful message to alleged war-criminals in stepping on British soil," TAG, a US-based activist group seeking legal redress to Tamil victims of Sri Lanka war, said.

Map of Nepal

“The arrest of the Nepali army officer sends a strong and important signal that the UK takes its international obligation to hold torturers accountable for atrocity crimes seriously, even if Nepal does not,” Adams, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch said. “The UK’s move should remind those accused of rights abuses the world over that they can run, but it’s getting a lot harder for them to hide.”

Colombo has routinely sought to exploit the immunity provisions available in several countries to sanitize alleged war-criminals by offering them diplomatic posts, Tamil activists say. 

Several expatriate Tamil groups have been active in filing legal actions against alleged war criminals in the last three years, political observers noted. 

In December 2010, Sri Lankan Major General Chagi Gallage, a member of Mahinda Rajapaksa's entourage to London, fled UK by chartering a flight on information that war crime charges were to filed against him in the courts of London.

In September 2011, Maj. Gen. (retd.) Jegath Dias, deputy Counsel in Sri Lanka’s embassy in Germany, and commander of Sri Lanka Army's (SLA's) 57th division during the last phase of the Sri Lanka war, was recalled by Colombo "in response to accusations he was involved in war crimes," from Switzerland.

"While litigation in several countries are on-going, and in some of these we may not be successful, the accumulation of evidence against alleged criminals will serve a critically important function when the associated individuals are relieved of diplomatic posts and stand naked to receive natural justice," TAG spokesperson added. "But legal actions should continue unabated on every presumptive war-criminal in all judicial fora so that at the minimum the movement of these individuals are curtailed," TAG spokesperson added.

TAG is currently involved in litigation on behalf of three Tamil plaintiffs against Sri Lanka's President Rajapakse alleging he committed war-crimes. The case is in appellate phase after the U.S. Department of State intervened to "suggest" head of state immunity to Rajapakse.

While U.S. Courts granted diplomatic immunity to the ex-Army General and currently Sri Lanka's Acting Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Shavendra Silva, against war crimes charges filed by the American University Washington College of Law on behalf of two Tamil plaintiffs, South Africa declined to receive Silva to a diplomatic post, linking General Silva to the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Sri Lankan civil war.