Stop-Torture-Report

statements we have taken from others since that report. In the following case
this was the witness’ second period of exposure to torture.
“There were 4-5 men in civil dress and speaking in Sinhala. They asked for my IC
[National Identity Card] card and name. I gave them my IC card. They
blindfolded and handcuffed me and stuffed a cloth in my mouth. In the back of
the van one person held me. We drove for 45 minutes; first on a smooth then a
bumpy one then a smooth road. They took off my blindfold in the room. It was
a dark room and there was a pot with water in the corner of the room for
drinking. There was no furniture. There was no window. I am unable to say
what kind of building it was. For interrogation I was taken to another room.
During the interrogation they introduced themselves as CID.”
(Witness 116)
This witness was released from the unknown detention site on payment of a
ransom of five lakh rupees (US$4,000 approximately) to the security forces by
his family. He was driven to a remote place while blindfolded, all the time
fearing he was being taken for execution. The CID team did not bother to
handcuff him on the way out because he could hardly walk after the torture.
The witness arrived in the UK about a week after he was released. His wounds
were inspected by a UK doctor while he was under police custody, who wrote a
letter saying there were healing scars and soft tissue injuries and marks that
appeared to be cigarette burns on his lower back. The witness’s scars were also
photographed while in UK police custody on arrival at the airport. Days after
this witness fled Sri Lanka one of his parents was taken into custody by the
security forces and questioned about his whereabouts. The surveillance and
intelligence regime among the Sri Lankan security forces is still in tact and
operating as a tool of continued oppression and collective punishment on
grounds of ethnicity and political affiliation.
In May 2015 this young Tamil man was abducted in a white van and tortured in
an unknown location by men who introduced themselves to him as military
intelligence. The security forces had previously detained one of his siblings now
abroad. In his case the pretext for abducting him was that he had briefly been
a child soldier, forcibly recruited by the LTTE in the final months of the war
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