Air Chief tells LLRC

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Air Chief tells LLRC‘UAV footage can counter false allegations’September 13, 2010, 12:00 pm
By Shamindra Ferdinando

Chief of Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Roshan Goonetileke says the presence of civilians had caused severe constrains during a three-year offensive directed against the LTTE. The war ended in May last year.
Goonetileke, credited with Sri Lanka’s successful air campaign, which destroyed the enemy’s fighting capability, training and communication facilities, says the LTTE took refuge among civilians to make it difficult for advancing ground forces as well as those directing indirect fire.
Testifying before the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), the Air Chief said that the military had received a directive from the government that the combined military strategy directed against the LTTE should not be at the expense of the civilian community.
Goonetileke succeeded General Sarath Fonseka as Chief of Defence Staff on November 16, 2009, after Fonseka quit to contest the presidential election in January Commenting on the final phase of the assault, Air Chief Goonetileke said that the government had declared ‘no fire zones’ east of the Kandy-Jaffna A9 road for the benefit of civilians, though the LTTE used them as a shield in a desperate bid to save the remaining fighting cadres and the leadership.
The CDS said that the SLAF had received a specific directive from President Mahinda Rajapaksa to stop air strikes as the army fought its way into the last LTTE-held area in the Mullaitivu District. Similarly the Army and the Navy, too, had received orders not to use any heavy weapons so as to prevent civilian casualties.
The Air Chief pointed out that rehabilitation of those who had once waged war against the government was today handled by the State.
Responding to allegations that the SLAF had deliberately targeted civilians, the Air Chief emphasised that air strikes had been launched on specific information obtained through electronic means and the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI). He emphasised that there had always been a thorough surveillance operation before the SLAF engaged targets.
The SLAF’s Israeli, Russian and Chinese jets and Mi-24 helicopter gunships caused irreparable damage to the LTTE. Jets launched from the Katunayake airbase carried out hundreds of raids annually until the fighting reached the final phase when President Rajapaksa halted the use of heavy weapons.
The Air Chief said that the SLAF headquarters had the capacity to monitor air strikes directed at targets in any part of the country through Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) which provided ‘real time intelligence’ both to the attack squadrons tasked with taking a particular target and the Operations Room in Colombo.
Goonetileke said he was confident that the footage obtained by UAVs and Beech craft could counter baseless allegations levelled against the SLAF. According to him, the footage (read as evidence) obtained by the UAVs was of immense value, particularly the rescue of civilians held at gun point by terrorists in April. The Colombo-based diplomatic community joined President Rajapaksa at the SLAF headquarters to monitor UAV footage of the rescue operation.
The Air Chief said that the LTTE had launched suicide attacks targeting civilians to deter them from seeking refuge in the government-held area. One suicide attack caused many deaths among civilians and soldiers deployed to receive those seeking protection, the Air Chief said, though the army did not react but continued with humanitarian work.
Explaining what he called the targeting procedure, the soft spoken official said that there had been instances when the SLAF had to turn a blind eye to presence of an LTTE leader at a particular place or a training facility due to the presence of civilians.