A Sri Lankan court sentenced five people to death, including two police officers, for their role in a massacre at a detention camp housing suspected Tamil Tiger rebels and former child soldiers, reports said on Wednesday. Less than half of the 40 inmates of the Bindunuwewa camp 140 miles east of Colombo survived after a machete-wielding mob rampaged through the rehabilitation camp in October 2000. Tamil protests over the massacre turned violent, sparking Sri Lanka’s worst inter-communal violence since 1983, when an anti-Tamil riot plunged the country into the full-scale war that has cost 64,000 lives and displaced one million. The sentences for the massacre, which sparked the island’s worst ethnic riots in 18 years, were automatically commuted to life imprisonment as Sri Lanka has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 1976. Local media said the 94-page judgment released late on Tuesday condemned police officers for complicity in the attack. Full Story
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