COLOMBO (AFP) — Human Rights Watch criticised Britain Saturday for not filing criminal charges against a former Sri Lankan warlord for rights abuses.
Vinayagmoorthy Muralitharan, also known as Colonel Karuna, was released on Thursday in London, after serving half a nine-month term for possessing an illegal travel document.
Karuna has now been transferred to immigration custody and awaits deportation.
Rights groups had been pressing London to prosecute him for international war crimes, including abducting and using child soldiers.
Britain said the Crown Prosecution Service found there was "insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal offences in the UK".
Brad Adams, Asia director at the New York-based rights watchdog, said in a statement: "Britain is missing a golden opportunity to show that human rights violators like Karuna will be tried for grave abuses, no matter where they took place.
"If he escapes prosecution, it will be a tragedy both for his many victims and for international justice."
Karuna, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing, was the de facto number two of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam -- renowned for suicide bombings and child combatants -- before he defected in 2004.
After that, he reportedly colluded with Sri Lanka's armed forces to drive the Tigers out of the eastern lagoon town of Batticaloa, one of the biggest military successes of 2007.
The UN has accused Sri Lankan security forces of helping Karuna to recruit child soldiers to fight the Tigers in the east, a charge Colombo denies.
Sri Lanka has instead accused UN diplomats of supporting "terrorists".
"British prosecutors should look hard again at the evidence presented by the police before they let Karuna leave British soil," Adams said.
"If he does leave, the Sri Lankan government should be preparing to prosecute Karuna should he return to Sri Lanka. Its failure to do so would only highlight its complicity in his recent crimes," he said.
Karuna had travelled to Britain on an apparently genuine Sri Lankan diplomatic passport issued under a false name.
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