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Colombo: More than 100 Sri Lankan UN peacekeepers accused of sexual exploitation and abuse in Haiti could face hard labour if found guilty, the military said yesterday, but said an inquiry was needed first.
UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said on Friday 108 of Sri Lanka's 950 soldiers in Haiti were being sent home on disciplinary grounds over allegations of "transactional sex". She said there were also allegations involving underage girls. "Definitely, if they are proved guilty the maximum punishment will be given according to the Sri Lankan law and military law," said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara.
Black mark
"If they are proved guilty, then that's a black mark," he added without elaborating further.
Under Sri Lankan law, hard labour is the maximum punishment for such offences, but it was not immediately clear what the maximum sentence was. Sri Lanka's government has been criticised for sheltering troops fighting a civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels at home against accusations of human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings.
Nordic truce monitors have accused state security forces of massacring 17 aid workers last year during a battle in the east against the rebels. No troops were questioned in connection with the killings, which a senior government official has blamed on the "irresponsibility" of their employer, Action Contre la Faim, a French aid group said.
The UN's Montas said it was now up to Sri Lanka to deal with the abuse allegations of the peacekeepers.
"They are back under national jurisdiction. So far, Sri Lanka has said ... that they are going to be prosecuted in Sri Lanka," she said. Over the last few years, as peacekeeping missions have expanded, reports of abuse have spread in various African nations.
British police and immigration officials have arrested a breakaway leader from Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels, the government has said.
Karuna Amman was arrested following a joint operation between Britain's new Border and Immigration Agency and London police, a Home Office (interior ministry) statement said.
"He is now being held in immigration detention [and] it would not be appropriate to comment further," it said.
The Home Office gave no details of where or when Karuna was arrested or what would happen to him. Karuna, whose real name is Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, is a former eastern commander of the Tamil Tigers.
Once a confidant of reclusive rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, Karuna split from the main movement in 2004, taking an estimated 6,000 fighters with him.
A swift Tiger offensive recaptured his territory and he was widely said to have fled into government areas.
Diplomats and analysts say Sri Lanka was using Karuna as part of its fight against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
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