British mercenaries face first Met Police war crimes investigation over Sri Lanka massacres

Two women hold a portrait of a casualty of war during a demonstration on September 19, 2011 at the UN's European headquarters in Geneva calling for a probe into alleged war crimes committed by Sri Lanka

(AFP via Getty Images)

The UK has opened an investigation into allegations of war crimes by British mercenaries involved in the Sri Lankan civil war, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said.

A case was opened in March after the Met “received a referral concerning war crimes alleged to have been committed by British mercenaries in Sri Lanka during the 1980s” and following a "scoping exercise", the spokesperson said.

It will be the first time British mercenaries will be investigated by the Metropolitan Police, which is the UK force designated to investigate accusations of war crimes or human rights abuses.

The allegations are against a private security group from the UK, Keenie Meenie Services (KMS), that trained a new Sri Lankan police unit in the 1980s – the Special Task Force (STF) – to fight against Tamil separatists.

The force has been accused of links to multiple atrocities, including the 1987 prawn farm massacre in which 83 people were killed.

The probe comes after the publication of a book by Declassified UK journalist Phil Miller, entitled Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes, that put forth evidence relating to KMS’s alleged involvement in atrocities in Sri Lanka.

The Tamil Information Centre said it had raised Miller's findings with the UN Working Group on Mercenaries, which monitors private military companies.

The UN body submitted concerns about KMS to Britain’s Foreign Office, enquiring about the actions taken by the UK government to “combat impunity”.

Miller said the investigation was being closely followed by the UK's 200,000 strong Tamil community. BBC News quoted him as saying: “A lot of Tamil people became refugees in the 1980s, that's when KMS were there.

"People remember being attacked by helicopter gunships so I think people are quite shocked to learn that in many of those cases helicopters were flown by British mercenaries."

Sri Lanka witnessed a 26-year conflict beginning in 1983, that ended in 2009 with the army declaring victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels (also known as LTTE) who wanted the creation of a Tamil state separate to the Buddhist-majority country.

It is estimated that the war accounted for over 100,000 civilian deaths and 50,000 fighters killed on both sides. Scores of people continue to be reported as “missing” in official records. The Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapksa recently admitted that the missing people are actually dead.

Tamil diaspora communities around the world have been protesting the civilian casualties, demanding military leaders face justice for alleged war crimes.

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