The Criminal Investigation Department has arrested two former female Navy officers over the disappearance of two women from a detention centre inside the Trincomalee naval base in 2008, Hiru News reported on Monday.
Both suspects were produced before the Trincomalee Magistrate’s Court and remanded until October 5. The CID said investigations are continuing.
Neither the suspects nor the two missing women have been named in the report.
The case was already before the courts
Monday’s arrests attach to a strand of the Trincomalee investigation that has been open for at least three months.
When the CID sealed the underground detention complex known as “Gun Site” inside the Trincomalee Naval Base in June, police said extensive investigations indicated the facility had been used to detain nearly 60 people, subject them to torture and extort ransom payments.
In setting out which cases had reached court at that point, the June reporting listed proceedings over a victim identified as Shantha from Kegalle at the Polgahawela Magistrate’s Court, two Tamil youths in Colombo before Colombo Magistrate’s Court No. 3, a man named Pradeep from Ibbagamuwa — and the disappearance of two young women from Trincomalee.
That last case is the one Monday’s remand order concerns. Hiru’s report does not say whether anyone had previously been arrested in it.
A widening set of proceedings
The Trincomalee site sits at the centre of several accountability tracks reopened this year. Former Navy Commander Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne was named a suspect in the connected case concerning the abduction and disappearance of 11 youths from Colombo and its suburbs, and was granted bail in July. A separate corruption case against former Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda and Yoshitha Rajapaksa was fixed for a pre-trial conference last week.
Police said in June that former detainees and people involved in running the facility had begun giving confidential statements before a magistrate. Whether Monday’s arrests followed from that evidence has not been reported.
What is not yet known
The report does not say what ranks the two suspects held, when they left the Navy, or what charges are being pursued. It also does not say whether the two missing women are among the roughly 60 people the CID believes passed through the site, or whether any earlier arrests have been made in this strand of the investigation.
