A loverly bunch of coconuts - Philip Alston on centre stage again

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, MP

Continued from yesterday

This article was written after the last Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial killings decided bizarrely that, despite anomalies, the original Channel 4 video was genuine. Now his successor has said the same about the latest Channel 4 version, which is supposed to be an extension of that original video, but is given a different date.

But that too would probably not have made a difference to your approach since Hewavitharana’s main crime is that ‘it would appear that he is a member of a network of Sri Lankan Professionals’. You seem to live in an Orwellian world in which Sri Lankans are generally bad and untrustworthy, but anyone who attacks the Sri Lankan government, Channel 4, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, is good and trustworthy.

I concluded my letter by saying that ‘Your performance however is slightly redeemed in that, at the end of your release, you say that, following our report, “my conclusion is that the views expressed do indeed raise several issues which warrant further investigation before it could reasonably be concluded that the video is authentic”.

We can only hope then that now, instead of introducing hypothetical traumatized victims to justify your initial less restricted critique, and contradicting yourself continuously, you actually check on the points made in the analysis, carefully studying the video yourself, and then point out what precisely you find inaccurate in our presentation. Any explanation you can offer for the moving leg of a purportedly dead person would be particularly welcome, and would I am sure provide immense relief.’

Original evidence

Fortunately Alston seems to have taken my advice, and commissioned his own inquiry. Significantly, Alston does not in his Technical Note reveal where he got his copy of the video, but one of his experts, Spivack, lets the cat out of the bag in saying that he looked at ‘a recording provided by Sarah Knuckey, acting on behalf of Prof Alston, originally provided to her by a group identified as ‘Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka’. Alston then, or rather Knuckey, laid themselves open to the charge of allowing the source of the original evidence to tamper with a subsequent version.

Hewa has noted that the ‘original video that Sri Lankan government got, which is high quality, is different to this video that UN analyzed, which seems to indicate low frame and low quality similar to cell phone (based on Spivack’s data). We can conclude that this video is recreated to show that it came from a mobile phone with low bit rates but some one missed the metadata layer’.

Alston does not explain why he did not approach Channel 4, with whom he had been in contact earlier, but instead went to a source that it had been explained to him was tainted. Obviously his prejudice against Sri Lankans does not extend to those opposed to the current government.

Several questions

Still, Alston has at least now made the sort of effort he should have made at the very start, and which I repeatedly pressed him to make. Sadly, his new found energy does not seem to have extended to a heightened analytical capacity. Whereas earlier I had assumed he was simply an excitable idealist, he has now shown himself deceitful too, though again he is so self-righteous that it is conceivable that he is simply not aware of the fraudulent nature of his arguments.

He also leaves several questions unanswered. For instance, did he ask Channel 4 for the video it showed? Failure to do so seems culpable on his part given that he claims to have responded to their showing of the video. If he did ask, and they refused, indicating some sort of diffidence on their part, he should have made this clear. The result is that he has sent to his experts a version of the video that seems different (ie tampered with further) from the one Channel 4 showed.

Press conferences

Then, too, why did he ask Journalists for Democracy for their video, but not for further details about the time and place of the purported incident? Failure to do so seems culpable on his part, since he should be concentrating on an incident, if any such occurred, rather than a video of an incident. If he did ask, and they refused, or expressed ignorance, that makes even more suspicious their anxious circulation of the video, along with an alleged date, to all and sundry.

In short, one gets the impression of a man anxious to make a noise, at politically significant moments, but without any concern to use his office to actually find out more about incidents he purports to find appalling.

To come back to his detailed Note, he begins as mentioned by suggesting that he has gone public only because of ‘the very public nature of the comments’, when in fact he was the one who began the practice of engaging in press conferences without allowing government a chance to respond.

Second, he claims that the reports by his three experts ‘strongly suggest that the video is authentic’, but in fact two of them deal only with the content of the video and only one deals with technicalities. The report of this last is very detailed, whereas the other two are brief. One of them has written only two pages, which Alston has summarized as ‘Dr Spitz found that the footage appeared authentic, especially with respect to the two individuals who are shown being shot in the head at close range. He found that the body reaction, movement, and blood evidence was entirely consistent with what would be expected in such shootings’.

Blank ammunition

Alston conveniently omits the two questions that Spitz says remain, including ‘it remains uncertain as to what accounts for the movement of this individual’s left leg’ and (with regard to another person it seems), ‘Under normal circumstances and without something maintaining his leg in this position, I would not expect his leg to remain in this position if he deceased’.

Alston’s answer to this is to admit that there were ‘a small number of characteristics which the experts were not able to explain’, but to claim that ‘Each of these characteristics can, however, be explained in a manner which is entirely consistent with the conclusion that the videotape appears to be authentic’’.

Why the devil then did neither he nor his experts bother to explain them? If the experts he hired cannot explain them, are we to believe that there are greater experts who could provide the explanations Alston thinks are possible?

Significantly his second content expert, Diaczuk, practically confines himself to the accuracy of the ‘recoil seen in the video’, and then another recoil. He grants that ‘the quality of the recording is poor, so I am trying to interpret minute details from a piece of evidence that is marginal at best’ (which lends credence to the view that this version, supplied to Alston, has been further tampered with).

Diaczuk’s conclusions are tentative - ‘Some questions may simply not be definitively answerable, but between the two discharges, I perceive recoil that is commensurate with that class of firearm’.

He then has a section entitled ‘Parts of the video that appear authentic’. An ordinary reader may see this as meaning that other parts are not, but even this analysis is very tentative. It grants that ‘the use of blank ammunition will produce gasses and slight recoil’, though this is not as forceful as with live ammunition - and Diaczuk can tell the difference through ‘evidence that is marginal at best’.

Forensic pathology

He explains the ‘sudden body movement’ by the person lying directly in front of the person shot by saying that ‘Although not fully within my area of expertise, it is quite reasonable that a bullet could pass completely through one person and hit another. I can state from experience that bullets fired from an AK-47 firearm, using 7.2 x 39 mm full metal jacket ammunition, have gone through 6 inches of wood consistently.’ But, ‘The low resolution does not allow me to observe a bullet impact on the victim(s)’.

With regard to the second victim, this expert discerns a plume of ‘high-pressure gases’ though ‘The plume is subtle and somewhat difficult to distinguish from the background ‘noise’ due to the sporadic nature of the video’.

He then discusses a ‘visible defect in the victim’s head’ and says ‘An expert in wound ballistics should perform further interpretation of this possible bullet wound’. Spitz, who is an expert in forensic pathology and toxicology, but evidently not in wound ballistics, has not engaged in this desired further interpretation, though whether the lapse is his or Alston’s is not clear.

To be continued