Raf Sanchez

Originally published in The Times

The Sri Lankan Army will come under pressure to display the body of Velupillai Prabhakaran (Raf Sanchez writes).

In 2006, US forces swiftly released images of the body of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. His badly damaged remains were identified by fingerprints, scars and tattoos.

In 1967 the Bolivian Army displayed the body of Che Guevara, killed while leading a guerrilla campaign in the country. His uniformed corpse was strapped to the runner of a military helicopter so it could be presented to the media.

The failure to produce Hitler’s corpse led to decades of speculation that he might have survived and escaped to Spain or Argentina. His body was burnt as the Red Army advanced into Berlin in May 1945. The Soviet Union had identified the remains using dental records but withheld the information until 1968