Jaya says Prabhakaran’s son’s killing ‘war crime’

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Wednesday called for the trial of Sri Lankan ‘war criminals’ following fresh evidence that the 12-year-old son of slain Tamil Tigers supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed in cold blood after being captured.

The chief minister told the media that photographs showed an innocent looking Balachandran Prabhakaran seated in a military bunker before he was shot in May 2009. She said his killing was ‘an inhuman act of extreme cruelty’. Calling it a ‘war crime’, she compared the conduct of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime with the Nazis and the way Hitler dealt with Jews.

‘He (Balachandran) was only 12 years. He was only a child. He did not commit any crime. As he was the son of Prabhakaran, the Sri Lankan army killed him,’ she said. Jayalalithaa spoke a day after a section of the media carried two photographs of Balachandran dressed only in shorts seated in a bunker just before he was killed allegedly at close range. DMK chief M Karunanidhi also urged India to take a stand against Sri Lanka ahead of the March meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva where the US is expected to come with a resolution against Colombo.