Frustrated Australian forensics return home - Sri Lanka worries it will expose extrajudicial killing

 

"..Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission pointing fingers at the security forces for the killing of international aid workers .."
Australian forensic experts who were brought down to investigate the killing of 17 aid workers in Mutur last month have returned home, frustrated by having to idle in Sri Lanka until legal and other modalities were cleared.

The experts were brought down with the mandate to carry out the second post mortem on the victims of the French aid agency but they were initially forced to wait owing to a delay in the Australian and Sri Lankan governments signing the necessary agreements and exhumation of the bodies.

On a Magisterial directive the bodies of two of the victims were exhumed for CID investigations while the remaining bodies are scheduled to be exhumed before October 2, for further investigations and the Australian experts are expected back in the country in time for the exhumation.

“The experts decided to go back to Australia because they had sophisticated equipment with them which was idling for a long time. They should be back before the remaining bodies are exhumed or the purpose of inviting them will be lost,” legal sources from the aid agency told The Daily Mirror.

The Australian forensics were invited by the Sri Lankan government following controversy raised over the killing of the Paris based Action Without Hunger aid workers from with both the government and the LTTE blaming each other for the death and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission pointing fingers at the security forces.

By: Easwaran Rutnam
Courtesy: Daily Mirror

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