Two Tamil-speaking Muslim media persons in Batticaloa, one in the position of district media coordinator and the other a ‘freelance journalist’, have been busy during the past weeks in Batticaloa taking video and photos of civilians protesting against SL military operated ‘grease-devils’. Based on their video recordings, the SL intelligence personnel operating from the SLA camps in Batticaloa, identify the protesters from different villages and hand them over to the so-called Terrorist Investigation Department officers who had come from Colombo to Batticaloa.
A special team of the Colombo ‘Terrorist Investigation Unit’ that arrived in Batticaloa on Friday has interrogated around 60 Tamils after the SL Army identified them using the video clips supplied by the two media operatives.
These ’media persons’ were recently assaulted by the protesters, when they entered the Batticaloa Teaching Hospital to take photographs of nurses while the hospital workers were protesting against the ‘grease devil” episode.
This incident took place following an attack on a Tamil woman by persons suspected as ‘grease devils’.
Sixty Tamil villagers were arrested in the first week of August at Oo’ra’ni, where the villagers were chasing a person alleged as a ‘grease devil”.
In his attempt to escape from the villagers, the SL ‘grease devil’ operative entered into a police post.
After three weeks, the 60 detained Tamil protesters were produced before the special TID team in Batticaloa police station on Friday.
After intensive interrogation, except fourteen, others were released. The fourteen are still under detention, according to the OIC of the Batticaloa police station.
Meanwhile, all former LTTE members in Ka’luvaagnchik-kudi in Batticaloa district, who came under interrogation by a special CID team that arrived from Colombo Friday, were released after being photographed and fingerprinted, police sources said.
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