Lanka calls for formal apology from ICJ

COLOMBO: Peace Secretariat Chief Dr. Rajiva Wijesinha has urged the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) to issue a formal apology for its false allegations.

In a letter to ICJ Chief, Justice Arthur Chaskalson, Wijesinha pointed out that Australian expert Dr. Dodd has specifically refuted Michael Birnbaum’s Addendum which has regrettably been issued in the name of the ICJ, in saying ‘there is no suggestion in my mind of substitution of exhibits, and to this end I would categorically refute the suggestion in the Birnbaum Report’.

“The long discourse therefore of your so-called legal expert Birnbaum on the arms used by the Sri Lankan Army is therefore not at all relevant.

If we were to go by his standards of evidence, we might conclude that there was evidence that he had been briefed by terrorists and their sympathisers who are determined to denigrate the Sri Lankan Forces,” he added.

The letter: “I write with reference to my letter of June 25 regarding the ICJ statement regarding the killing of 17 Aid Workers in Muttur last year.

I received a response to that from the ICJ Secretary General Mr. Howen, which reiterated his concern - which we all share - about that unfortunate event.

It did not address the main point of my letter, which was the unwarranted assumption by him, based on the report by Mr. Birnbaum, that there had been tampering with evidence.

As you know, Mr. Birnbaum’s report, which was an addendum to his initial report on the subject, was concerned largely with a discrepancy between the identification of a single bullet in two reports.

This discrepancy was used by Mr. Birnbaum to raise an allegation of ‘powerful grounds to suspect that someone removed from the exhibits a bullet that he thought might be incriminating and substituted another’. This led to the assertion that an investigation should be held into ‘who had access to the bullets and who tampered with them.’

Howen goes further and refers to ‘evidence of tampering’ in his letter of 6th June to our ambassador in Geneva. On June 25th the ICJ issued a press release which asserted, on the basis of Dr Dodd’s report, that ‘There is therefore evidence to indicate the 5.56 calibre bullet was removed from the evidence submitted as exhibits to the Kantale Magistrate, and that another bullet of a different type was substituted.’

Though your release of July 5 was more temperate, there was no retraction whatsoever, let alone an apology, for the outrageous allegation of the June 25th release.

In the July 5th release you made a further claim, about the number of aid workers killed, citing the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies. I checked with them and conveyed to Mr. Howen that they denied the attribution, but I have not as yet had a response to that letter.

He should of course check again with CHA but, if what they told me is correct, ICJ should realize that some of the sources it uses cannot be trusted. This is the more serious in that recently Sir John Holmes, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, has repeated the same canard.

Meanwhile, as you must be aware, Dr Dodd, having reviewed the evidence as the Sri Lankan government had always requested, has registered that his original identification was erroneous and the presence of ‘a 5.56 calibre projectile can be confidently excluded’.

He further states that he hopes ‘this supplementary report now settles convincingly the issue of calibre of projectile removed’ and ‘that all projectiles retrieved from the bodies examined were of the same calibre’ viz 7.62. I am writing therefore to request that ICJ issues a formal apology for its false allegations.

In an earlier and more decent age such professional incompetence would have been a reason for resignation, but I suspect this is too much to expect from Mr. Howen. I hope however that ICJ will be very wary of making further use of the services of Mr. Birnbaum, and that your Executive Committee will ensure that the ICJ Secretary General does not continue, as the old proverb has it, to put his foot in his mouth.

Needless to say, assuming we can be sure that ICJ too has not been lured into the current campaign of the LTTE to destabilize the Government, we look forward to further cooperation with you in what should be your basic purpose of upholding the rule of law. For this it is necessary to observe the high standards of analysis and objectivity that a decent judicial system requires.”