Sri Lankan CID interrogates former LTTE members in Batticaloa

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 September 2011, 21:13 GMT]
A team of Criminal Investigation Unit of the SL Police Terrorist Division arrived in Batticaloa from Colombo Friday and interrogated several former cadres of the LTTE who worked for the movement ten to fifteen years ago. The Sri Lankan CID officers collected information about the former Tiger members taking their fingerprints and photographing them. The investigators in SL Police uniform took the former LTTE members to the Sri Lanka Army camp in Ka'luvaangchikkudi in CTB buses for interrogation, fingerprinting and photographing. At the army camp, one officer was in police uniform and others were in civil but all claimed that they were from the CID in Colombo. In the meantime, the Officer-in-Charge of the Ka'luvaagnchik-kudi Police told media that he was not aware of such interrogation of former LTTE members.

After militarising Tamil homeland with Sinhala military personnel and bringing in the detention and investigation powers under the recently removed Emergency into the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the SL forces were still enjoying the same powers as before, legal sources in Batticaloa said.

The sudden arrival of CID personnel from Colombo to Batticaloa and interrogating former LTTE cadres had caused tension and fear in the district as there is no State of Emergency, according to Batticaloa district TNA parliamentarian Mr.P.Ariyanethran.

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