Sri Lankan military claim to find rebels' torture chambers

Sri Lankan officials today said anti-terrorist commandoes had found torture chambers at a captured rebel base, alleging the insurgents used the cement cells to punish informers and people who tried escape their ranks.

However, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam denied the allegation, and the military offered little proof of its claim.

Both the government and Tigers have been accused of torturing – and killing - dissenters and opponents, and each side routinely accuses the other of committing heinous acts, allegations that are regularly denied and often nearly impossible to verify.

The latest report came last night when the ministry posted a statement on its website saying commandoes uncovered torture chambers after seizing control of four rebel bases and seven smaller camps in the eastern district of Ampara last week.

At one of the camps, “torture chambers and lockups were established to torture escapees and informers, including women cadres,” the report said.

The website had a photograph taken from outside the four cells, showing a cement structure with four small doorways covered by rusty gates.

Military spokesman Brig Prasad Samarasinghe said today that “five escapees who have surrendered have told (government) officers that the facility was being used by the rebels to punish dissidents.”

However, neither he nor the website report provided details.

The rebels said the report was part of a government propaganda campaign to discredit them.

“The Sri Lankan state is now in the process of tarnishing the image of our liberation organisation,” a rebel spokesman, Rasiah Ilanthirayan, said from the insurgents’ headquarters in the northern town of Kilinochchi.

The rebels have been fighting for more than 20 years for a separate homeland for the country’s 3.1 million minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese.

Although both sides claim to be adhering to a Norwegian-brokered 2002 ceasefire, violence has escalated since late 2005, with more than 3,600 people killed last year alone.