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Govt. Alleges Suspects had Dealings with LTTE; Medics in Police Custody

HUMAN RIGHTS Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said a group of medical doctors are being detained at the Criminal Investigation Department on ‘reasonable suspicion of collaboration with the LTTE’, BBC reported yesterday.

“I don't know what the investigations would reveal but maybe they were even part of that whole conspiracy to put forward this notion that government forces were shelling and targeting hospitals and indiscriminately targeting civilians as a result of the shelling,” he said. The minister says the doctors must be produced in court every month while investigations proceed pending possible charges. He said these investigations could last up to a year, but there might be extensions to that.

BBC reported that, a group of doctors who worked in Sri Lanka's rebel-held war zone are being held on suspicion of collaborating with Tamil rebels, the government says. The doctors could be in detention for a year or more before a trial date is set.

During the final phase of the war, the group of doctors treated wounded and ill patients admitted to the makeshift health posts in the LTTE-held zone encircled by government forces.

Two of them had been senior local health directors and the United States said they had "helped save many lives" while the UN had called them "heroic".
(Courtesy: Daily Mirror)