The UN and human rights groups have criticised Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s decision to pardon a convicted murderer, warning it undermines the rule of law.
Former MP Duminda Silva was sentenced to death along with four others in 2016 for shooting dead a rival politician and three of his supporters in 2011.
Mr Silva, who was a political ally of Mr Rajapaksa, is among 94 prisoners to be given a presidential pardon.
Rights activists have reacted angrily.
“It shows complete disdain on the part of the executive for the rule of law, for legal process and for public accountability,” Ambika Satkunanathan, a human rights lawyer based in Colombo told the BBC.
Mr Rajapaksa came to power on a Sinhala nationalist campaign in November 2019. He was the powerful defence secretary when his elder brother, Mahinda, was president from 2005 to 2015.
Among those released included 16 people from the minority Tamil community accused of links with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.
The group was vanquished in a bloody civil war that ended in 2009. Some have been held for more than a decade under the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).
Colombo-based diplomats and rights activists have welcomed the early release of those held under the anti-terrorism law, which activists describe as draconian.
The UN and the US have been pressing Sri Lanka for accountability for alleged war crimes committed during the nearly three-decade old war with the Tamil rebels and to release those held under the PTA. The Sri Lankan government has consistently denied war crime accusations.
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Sri Lankan presidents have a history of pardoning those convicted.
In March 2020, within months of coming to power, President Rajapaksa pardoned soldier Sunil Ratnayake who had been sentenced to death for killing eight Tamil civilians, including a five-year-old and two teenagers, in the village of Mirusuvil in northern Jaffna region in 2000.
It was one of the few convictions from the civil war era, and the UN said the pardon was “an affront to victims”
Duminda Silva was found guilty with four others of shooting dead Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra and three of his supporters during local elections in Colombo in 2011. The two men were both members of the then governing party. The verdict was later upheld by the country’s Supreme Court in 2018.
“Sri Lanka has an accountability problem. Even in the few cases where criminal accountability has been achieved, we see the outcomes undermined by this type of pardon,” Rory Mungoven, Asia-Pacific chief at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights told the BBC.
“It is not just in relation to human rights cases; this relates to the functioning of the criminal justice system for Sri Lanka as a whole. It is a matter of concern for all Sri Lankans when the rule of law and judicial process are undermined in this way.”
When contacted, the Sri Lankan president’s office did not comment further on the pardoning of Mr Silva.
The release triggered a wave of anger on social media in Sri Lanka
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