Untitled - International Commission of Jurists

Notwithstanding these considerations, the Commission decided to conclude that the
actual attack upon the vehicle by the air force helicopter and fixed wing aircraft had
lasted only 26 minutes in total while the remaining period had witnessed only
different attacks on targets some 500 yards near the MSF vehicle but not directly at it.
Consequently, it concluded that no person or persons in the service of the Sri Lanka
government were responsible for any wrongful act or omission? and the question of
what action should be taken against such person does not arise for consideration. 244
Interestingly, the precise time of the last point of radio contact that the Colombo MSF
office had with the MSF personnel is omitted in the Commission report. (That contact
was some time after 1.25 pm when one of the doctors had confirmed that a bomb had
fallen ten or twenty metres from the vehicle, stating further that ‘we can’t say
anymore. We are going to hide ourselves.’ 245 ) This omission is material and highly
significant if one independently evaluates as to whether the shooting and attacks on
the vehicle had continued intentionally, even after the responsible command had been
notified that it was an MSF vehicle that was being fired upon.
Even with this omission however, the time period of 26 minutes (from 1.00 pm to
1.26 pm) that the Commission defines as being the limited period during which the
MSF vehicle was fired upon (based on the evidence of the air force officers and their
records) does not accord with the recorded radio message from the MSF doctor under
attack to the MSF Colombo office at some point after 1.25 pm. As stated previously,
the uncritical acceptance of the evidence of the relevant air force personnel leads this
Commission to its inevitable conclusion that no blame can be attached at all to
government personnel.
According to the Commission report, the next radio contact that MSF Colombo had
with their injured personnel was at 3.00 pm when the nature of the injuries caused to
the passengers were described. This part of the Commission’s report is also quite
confusing, given that the term ‘radio contact was on right throughout’ is used in this
paragraph contradicting its earlier claim that radio contact was lost between MSF
Colombo and its personnel under attack at an unspecified time. 246
2.3. The Kokkadicholai Commission of Inquiry
Date of Appointment: 18 June 1991 247
Date of Report: 9 March 1992 248
Mandate: to report on whether there was any connection between the two
incidents of the explosion of a device on 12 June 1991 resulting in the deaths
of two soldiers and the injury to another and the killing of sixty-seven civilian
inhabitants of nearby villages in Batticaloa. It was also required, inter alia, to
report on whether the civilian deaths resulted from actions of the armed forces
244 ibid, at p. 16.
245 ibid, at p. 15.
246 ibid, at p. 15.
247 Appointed by President R. Premadasa. The Commissioners comprised K.D.O.S.M. Seneviratne,
Sivanathan Selliah and Abdul Majeed Mohammed Sahabdeen. Sessional Paper No. 11, 1992.
248 Sessional Paper No. 11, 1992.
73