Colombo Additional Magistrate Lahiru Silva has issued a warrant against a prosecution witness who failed to appear on Monday in the case brought over a 2016 protest outside the United Nations office in Colombo, and put further evidence off to 7 December.
The case is against National Freedom Front leader and former minister Wimal Weerawansa and five others, who face a charge of causing a public nuisance by blocking the road while protesting, Hiru News reported on Monday morning.
What happened in court
Further evidence was due to be taken on Monday. The eighth witness appeared and was ordered to return on the next date. The fifth witness did not appear, and the court issued a warrant against him. The magistrate made the orders after submissions by Cinnamon Gardens (Kurunduwatta) Police, which filed the case.
It is the witness, not any of the accused, who is the subject of Monday’s warrant.
The 2016 protest
The charge arises from a demonstration on 6 February 2016 against the visit to Sri Lanka of the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. Protesters gathered outside the UN office at Thummulla, Colombo, blocking roads in the area.
Investigating officers told the court that about 600 people, including the accused, took part and that the main road was obstructed.
Hiru names five of the six accused: Wimal Weerawansa, Weerakumara Dissanayake, Jayantha Samaraweera, Roger Seneviratne and Piyasiri Wijenayake. The sixth is not named in the filing.
The case so far
The prosecution has been running for years and has moved slowly. This desk recorded the court adjourning it to 13 July, then postponing it from July to 21 September, and in September a warrant issued for Weerawansa himself when he did not appear — he arrived in court shortly afterwards and that warrant was recalled. Monday’s order is the next step in the same case.
Not reported
Hiru does not name the witness, say why he failed to appear, or state how many prosecution witnesses remain to be heard. It does not record any submission from defence counsel, say whether the accused were present on Monday, or give the maximum penalty the charge carries.
Corroboration. No other verified newsroom had filed on Monday’s hearing at the time of writing. The Daily Mirror’s breaking-news rail had published nothing on it, Ada Derana has returned a CloudFront 403 to this desk for more than 50 consecutive days, and EconomyNext was returning a site-wide HTTP 520. A search returns several earlier warrant stories in this same case from 2023 and September 2026 under near-identical headlines; none of those is the hearing reported here, and no figure or detail from them has been used.
