him, that he was innocent of any attempt to incite the public, and that the case was part of an attempt to silence him. Then, while still in military custody, Fonseka seemed to downplay his earlier claim that Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had ordered the killing of Tamil Tiger rebels as they were trying to surrender in May, 2009. The BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo noted, however, that Fonseka did not make a blanket denial that no war crimes had been committed, but rather stipulated that no war crimes took place to his knowledge. Next, in a 7 June 2010 interview with the BBC's Hard Talk programme Defence Secretary Rajapaksa threatened to execute Fonseka if he testified at an independent war crimes investigation, stating "He can't do that..That is a treason. We will hang him if he do that." The next day, 8 June 2010, General Fonseka denied having told lies or having committing treason when speaking of the possibility of war crimes being committed during fighting against Tamil Tiger rebels. After his arrest Fonseka was charged with a number of civilian and military offences. On 13 August 2010 Fonseka was found guilty of engaging in politics while on active service by a court martial. He was stripped of his rank and medals. On 17 September 2010 Fonseka was found guilty of breaching arms procurement guidelines (corruption) by a court martial. He was sentenced to 30 months rigorous imprisonment and stripped of his parliamentary seat. Fonseka is currently being tried in a civilian court on accusations of spreading public disaffection in respect of the "white flag" case. During a counter-insurgency seminar conducted by Sri Lanka Army in June 2011, Lawrence Smith - an attaché of the American embassy in Sri Lanka from 2008 revealed "...from what I was privileged to hear and to see, the offers to surrender that I am aware of seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE -- Nadesan, KP -- people who weren't and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE. So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were in fact real..." However the US State Department characterized the statement as "personal