Sri Lankan general protests innocence

General Weesakera says he helped prevent anarchy

By Alastair Lawson in Colombo

A Sri Lankan general who faces allegations of murder and torture during a left-wing uprising in the late 1980s has strenuously protested his innocence.

In an interview with the BBC, Major General Ananda Weerasekera said accusations that he had presided over a spate of disappearances in between 1987 and 1990 were a shocking distortion of the truth.

The general said that he never resorted to extra judicial means to suppress the uprising, during which he ran numerous detention centres for captured rebels near the central town of Anuradhapura.

It is estimated that about 60,000 people on both sides died during the insurgency staged by the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party.

Supporters cry foul

So far no senior army officer has been convicted for human rights abuses during the uprising, even though its well known that thousands of people were tortured and executed without trial.

No senior army officer has yet been convicted

The general is one of the few army officers in Sri Lanka ever to appear in court charged of human rights abuses during the JVP uprising.

He says that the allegations of murder and torture that have been made against him in Anuradhapura magistrates court are based on flimsy evidence given by people who have committed perjury.

"If somebody is to say that I was involved in these shocking charges, after the proceedings are over the world will know whether it was true or not. I am one person who did not even touch my own personal weapon for nearly 15 years," he told the BBC.

The general's supporters say that the government has instigated the criminal proceedings because he is closely associated with the right-wing Sihala Urumaya party, which threatens to take votes away from the ruling Peoples' Alliance party in elections that are due around October.

Indictment ruling awaited

They accuse the authorities of mounting a sustained campaign to discredit him.

Kusuma Karunaratne's son, Susantha, was one of thousands who vanished

The general says that he played a key role during the uprising in preventing Sri Lanka from descending into chaos and anarchy.

"Of course before I took over command there were dead bodies all over, killings and, you know, certain unnumbered vehicles moving. So I used my authority to prevent all that and brought the thing under control," he said.

The general, who has spent 35 years in the army, makes his next court appearance in Anuradhapura on 15 August.

Meanwhile his lawyers are filing a separate action in Colombo Supreme Court to try to get his pension restored.

In what looks set to be a protracted legal tussle, the Sri Lankan attorney general is expected to decide soon whether or not he should be formally indicted.