U.N. Human rights investigator, Philip Alston, said on Thursday the footage was probably real, and called for a war crimes investigation into the final months of the war between the government and Tamil rebels that ended in May.

Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said on Friday, “We don’t accept his conclusions, and we believe his conclusions are highly subjective and biased…We believe he is on a crusade of his own to force a war crime inquiry against Sri Lanka.”  He said the government’s own investigation of the footage revealed it was filled with “discrepancies and shortcomings,” and accused Alston of not following proper procedures before announcing his conclusions about the footage.

The footage which appears to show the summary execution of Tamils by Sri Lankan troops, was shot by a Sri Lankan soldier using a cell phone in January 2009, according to Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, which released the footage.

While the government dismissed the footage as fake, Alston said reports by three U.S.-based independent experts on forensic pathology, video analysis and firearm evidence “strongly suggest that the video is authentic.”  These experts concluded the footage of the shootings showed the use of live ammunition, and there was no evidence that the images of two people being shot in the head at close range had been manipulated.

The U.S. State Department has accused the government and the rebels of possible war crimes in the killing of civilians during the final months of fighting, when government forces crushed the rebels and ended 25 years of civil war.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, said on Friday “We believe a full and impartial investigation is critical if we’re to confront all the very big question marks that hang over this war…Obviously if the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Sri Lankan government has done nothing wrong, it will have nothing to fear from an international investigation.”  Sri Lanka however, has on numerous occasions rejected calls for international investigation of its conduct during the fighting as an infringement of its sovereignty.

The civil war on the island nation killed between 80,000 and 100,000 since 1983, and more than 7,000 civilians were killed in the last months of the war.

For more information, please see:

BBC News- Sri Lanka rejects UN Execution Video Claims– 8 January 2010

The Canadian Press- Sri Lanka Reject UN’s Conclusions on Video Purporting to Show Army’s Execution of Tamils – 8 January 2010

The New York Times- Sri Lanka Rejects U.N. Execution Video Report– 8 January 2010