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SF quoted as saying he’s ready to testify before war crimes probe

BBC yesterday reported that Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had, in a HARDtalk interview, threatened to execute former Army Commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka, MP, if the latter continued ‘to suggest top officials may have ordered war crimes during the final hours of the Tamil war’. "That‘s treason and we will hang him (Fonseka) if he does that," BBC quoted Gotabhaya as having said.

HARDtalk presenter Stephen Sackur, in a report posted on BBC website yesterday admitted he had had a clandestine telephone conversation with Gen. Fonseka in military detention. He said, "Gen. Fonseka told me, in a clandestine telephone interview, that he would be prepared to testify before any independent investigation of alleged abuses during the Tamil war." Sackur quotes Fonseka as having said, "I will not hide anything."

Sackur said when he ‘put this possibility’ to Gotabhaya, the latter had responded with an extraordinary tirade’: "He can’t do that.

He was the commander… That is treason. We will hang him if he does that. I’m telling you … How can he betray the country? He is a liar, liar, liar."

The BBC report said Gotabhaya had also ‘ruled out any possibility of an independent, third-party investigation of alleged war crimes committed by both the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers in the final phases of the war’.

"We are an independent country, we have the ability to investigate all these things," Gotabhaya was quoted as having told Sackur.