Colombo: A Sri Lankan general serving as a
UN diplomat in New York is prepared to face a US court to deny charges his men committed war crimes during the island's civil
war, reports said Tuesday.
A civil case has been filed in New York on behalf of two
people whose relatives were killed in the final stages of the
conflict, which ended in 2009 when the army launched a
military onslaught against Tamil separatists.
A New York court served a summons last Friday at the New
York residence of Major General Shavendra Silva, who is Sri
Lanka's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.
"Even with or without diplomatic privileges, I have the strength and courage and I will fight to safeguard Sri Lanka's interest," Silva told the Colombo-based Financial Times newspaper today.
He said President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was in New York
last week to attend the annual UN General Assembly meetings,
had directed officials to seek legal advice.
Silva was commanding officer of the 58th Division in the
army which helped crush the Tamil Tiger rebels, who had waged a war for decades demanding a homeland for the Tamil ethnic minority.
"This law suit is a yet another sinister attempt by the
bankrupt LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to tarnish
the hard-won victory. I will not let any person or organisation downgrade the defeat of terrorism in Sri Lanka,
to which many contributed," Silva said.
The case was filed last week by the American University
Washington College of Law, a centuries-old Washington college.
It is acting on behalf of Vathsala Devi and Seetharam
Siva. Devi's husband and Siva's father were allegedly killed
by Sri Lankan army shelling during the final weeks of the war.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 11:06