Photographs suggest Tamil leader's son, Balachandran Prabhakaran, was executed

A NEW photograph showing the 12-year-old son of a Tamil Tiger commander apparently in the custody of the Sri Lankan army just hours before his death in May 2009 has raised fresh questions over whether the boy was executed in the last moments of the civil war.

Sri Lankan military commanders say Balachandran Prabhakaran, son of Velupillai Prabhakaran, died when he was caught in the crossfire between the two warring sides on the final day of the 26-year-long civil conflict.

But a new documentary, No Fire Zone, about the Sri Lankan civil war features potentially incriminating photographs taken within two hours of each other - one taken at 10.14am on May 19, 2009 apparently showing the boy eating chocolate in the custody of Sri Lankan military and a second at 12.01 of his bullet-ridden body.

The bare-chested boy looks pensive in the earlier picture as he sits in a sandbagged bunker in a pair of khaki and black shorts with a blue plaid sarong draped over his shoulders. A man stands partly off-camera in military fatigues.

In the next shot he is seen in the same shorts lying on the ground with four visible bullet holes in his chest.

"The new photographs are enormously important evidentially because they appear to rule out any suggestion that Balachandran was killed in cross-fire or during a battle," the film's director Callum Macrae told British media yesterday

"They show he was held, and even given a snack, before being taken and executed in cold blood."

Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka say data analysed from the two pictures show they were taken from the same camera.

But a Sri Lankan military spokesman yesterday dismissed the allegations as "lies, half-truths and rumours".

Army spokesman Ruwan Wanigasuriya said the photos showed "no substantive evidence" and were released in the No Fire Zone documentary by British filmmaker Callum Macrae to coincide with a UN Human Rights Council session next month in which Sri Lanka's human rights record will again come under the microscope.

"This is not the first time such unsubstantiated allegations are levelled against the Lankan forces. These come up as we near UNHRC meeting and die down thereafter. No substantive evidence has been presented for us to launch a probe" he said.

The film's release also coincides with a new International Crisis Group report released overnight, which talks of a country in the grip of a ruling family, the Rajapaksas, which controls the presidency, the parliament and the security forces.

A UN review concluded as many as 40,000 civilians were killed in the last months of the war despite Sri Lankan government insistence it did all it could to prevent civilian casualties. The UN review found credible allegations of war crimes by both sides.