A Canadian Tamil man has returned to Toronto after spending three years in the custody of Sri Lanka’s anti-terrorism police, who detained him until he signed a false confession saying he had smuggled equipment to the Tamil Tigers.
The below are extracts of his account to Stewart Bell of the National Post newspaper (see full report here)
From the room where he was held [by the Terrorism Investigation Department], Mr. Samathanam said he could see the detainees being hit with cricket wickets and chunks of hard rubber. “One or two cases they did it in front of me, I think just to scare me,” he said. “Others were in a common area, which I could see.”
It was worse at night, when the officers had been drinking, he said. In one unit, detainees would be electrocuted with wires attached to their fingers, he said. In another, they were anally raped with an iron rod.
When it was his turn to be questioned, he was handcuffed awkwardly with one arm above his head and the other behind his back. The officers would push on his arms, straining his shoulders.
They asked him about the LTTE. They showed him pictures taken at Tamil events in Toronto and asked him to identify the people in the photos, he said.
They told him it would be 20 years before he was released, but that if he signed a confession, he would be brought before the Colombo court and freed.
On Dec. 17, 2007, a group of officers came to his room when he was asleep. He said he remembered the date because it was his wife’s birthday. They kicked his stomach and groin, and punched him in the head, he said, and talked about killing the “Canadian LTTE.”
A few months later, he was transferred to Boosa detention centre in Galle.
Each day, when he was moved to the interrogation room, he would see prisoners being tortured, he said. The officers would pour gasoline in plastic shopping bags and tie them over prisoners’ heads, he said.
During questioning, the interrogators told him that unless he confessed, his wife would be arrested and raped. It was a threat made believable by the conduct he had witnessed. It broke him. He said he would admit to whatever they wanted.
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