Independent experts have concluded that the controversial video tape depicting alleged extra-judicial killings by the Sri Lankan army is "authentic," a top UN envoy said on Thursday, as he asked the government to undertake a probe into the allegations.
"The conclusion very clearly is that video tape is authentic," Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extra judicial killings, told journalists.
The investigation affirms the need for an independent inquiry into the persistent flow of allegations of extra-judicial executions committed by both sides during the closing phases of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, he said.
"The result of this analysis then would seem to point to the need for the government of Sri Lanka to undertake the investigation that I had called for initially," Alston said.
"I call for an independent inquiry to be established to carry out an impartial investigation into war crimes, and other grave violations of humanitarian and human rights law allegedly committed in Sri Lanka," he added.
Footage telecast on Britain's Channel 4 in August last year showed a Sri Lankan soldier shooting at point blank range a Tamil rebel who is bound and blindfolded.
The video also shows eight bound corpses reinforcing allegations about extra-judicial executions on part of the Sri Lankan army.
The Sri Lankan government initially declared that the video was fabricated, but later conducted investigations that were widely discredited.
Dissatisfied with the conclusions of the Sri Lankan probe, Alston commissioned a number of independent experts including forensic pathologists, firearms experts and forensic videotape analysts to study the tape.
"Each of these experts subjected the video to a very careful and thorough examination and concluded that there was nothing to indicate that the video was a fake," Alston said.
"My own interpretation of their conclusion is that they point very clearly to the authenticity of the video... In addition the various points raised by the Sri Lankan experts for the most part systematically rebutted by these independent experts," he said.
Alston, however, pointed out the investigation left some issues unresolved due to lack of evidence available to the independent experts.
One grey area in particular is that the date encoded on the video shows July 17, 2009, but the conflict ended in May 2009.
The United Nations expert stated that this anomaly did not mean that "the video tape has been staged because every indication is that the killings were genuine, were undertaken in the way depicted but it would certainly indicate that video was not taken during the final phases of the conflict as alleged by those who released the tape".
