I killed them, I killed them, I killed them: Gotabaya claimed to have killed the surrendered LTTE cadres

When former  U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Criminal Justice Stephen Rapp told  the former defence secretary and current president of Sri Lanka Gotabaya Rajapaksa that the US could help prosecute LTTE cadres who had surrendered to the military in 2009 in Mullivaikkal, Rajapaksa responded by saying that investigations would take a long time and that they would escape punishment and that he had killed those who surrendered.

Rapp was speaking yesterday at a webinar organized by the Global Tamil Forum, Canadian Tamil Congress and the Sri Lankan Campaign entitled “Sri Lanka: Quest for Justice, Rule of Law & Democratic Rights”.

When asked if the LTTE could have been punished for the crimes, Rapp said that the “government hated the LTTE”.

“I remember raising this issue with defence secretary Gotabaya, now President Rajapaksa when I was there,” Rapp told the online discussion.  As he elaborates on this,

“Of course, recalling, that many of the individuals that could have been charged were in fact, according to credible evidence, killed after surrender. The numbers are around 360 that were given out.

I remember the defence secretary saying, “Oh, trials, trials, you know they go on so long and people get off”.

And then he said, “I killed them, I killed them, I killed them”.