8/5/2007
By Walter Jayawardhana

An Australian pathologist has denied the report by the Geneva based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) that Sri Lankan authorities may have tampered with the evidence connected with the killings of 17 aid workers connected with a French NGO.

The Sri Lankan aid workers were killed at the height of the fighting between the Sri Lanka security forces in August 2006 in Muttur in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka when the Tamil Tigers invaded the Muslim majority smaller port town adjacent to Trincomalee.

The International Commission of Jurists making sensational headlines all over the world said it had "serious concerns" that a bullet may have been removed from evidence submitted by investigators to a Sri Lankan court and used the Australian pathologist report to substantiate the charge against Sri Lanka.

Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, Mahinda Samarasinghe, at a news briefing held today (03 August 2007), informed that in a supplementary report titled "Independent Forensic Investigation of the Muttur Massacre," Dr. Malcolm Dodd, Consultant Senior Forensic Pathologist from Australia, has upheld the Sri Lankan Government Analyst's opinion in the investigations into the ACF killings in August 2006. Earlier Dr. Dodd had expressed the view that one of the projectiles recovered from one of the victims was of a 5.56 calibre, and not of 7.62 calibre as were the rest, as concluded by the Sri Lankan Government Analyst.

Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Palitha Kohona pointed out that the comments contained in the initial Dodd Report had been used by several international groups to discredit the Government of Sri Lanka and to tarnish the image of Sri Lanka. Particular reference was made to the June 2006 Birnbaum Report (International Commission of Jurists - Addendum to report: Sri Lanka - The Investigations and Inquest into the killing of seventeen aid workers in Muttur in August 2006).

In June, leading to attacks on Sri Lanka the ICJ said, ""There is, therefore, evidence to indicate that the 5.56 caliber bullet was removed from the evidence submitted as exhibits ... and that another bullet of a different type was substituted."

But on August 3, at the press conference Sri Lanka's foreign ministry issued a statement quoting Dodd contradicting the ICJ's evidence-tampering allegation.

Quoting the Australian pathologist the Sri Lanka government said as he was saying, "There is no suggestion in my mind of substitution of exhibits. To this end, I would categorically refute the suggestion in that (ICJ) report." The controversy regarding the Muttur killings arose because the Norwegian peace monitors who were being widely alleged to be supportive of the LTTE blamed the deaths on Sri Lankan security forces collaborated by the LTTE while the Government of Sri Lanka blamed the Tamil Tigers for the massacre.

In the supplementary report from Dr. Dodd communicated through the Australian High Commission in Colombo, and received by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs August 3, Dr. Dodd has stated that the presence of "a 5.56 calibre projectile can be confidently excluded". Dr. Dodd further states that he hopes "this supplementary report now settles convincingly the issue of calibre of projectile removed," and "that all projectiles retrieved from the bodies examined were of the same calibre (7.62)."

Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe further said, that "it is now upto those who had used the Dodd Report subjectively to cast aspersions on the integrity on the Government of Sri Lanka and its investigative processes, to retract their statements and in future not to leap to unduly hasty conclusions, when not in possession of the full facts."