Anojan Sivarasa, the Sri Lankan migrant worker sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia over a Facebook post, has been cleared of the case entirely and is to be brought home, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism Minister Vijitha Herath has announced.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Prosecution decided on 9 November not to pursue the case any further, the minister said — a step that removes the last of the proceedings against him. There is now no case against him before any Saudi court, Hiru News reported at 8.54 p.m. Colombo time.
Herath said all necessary arrangements would be made for Anojan’s return “following his release from all legal proceedings and penalties in Saudi Arabia,” the Daily Mirror reported.
Still in custody, home within weeks
Hiru’s filing carries a detail the Daily Mirror’s does not: Anojan is still being held, and the minister said he is due to be brought back to the island within the next one or two weeks.
Neither filing gives a date for his physical release from detention, and neither explains why a man against whom no case remains is still in custody.
Who the minister credited
Herath attributed the outcome to the guidance of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, diplomatic interventions by the Foreign Ministry, and the cooperation of the Saudi Arabian government and judiciary. He also acknowledged the diplomatic missions and officials of both countries and the legal team that travelled to Saudi Arabia to work on the case.
Anojan’s relatives visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday to thank the President, the ministry and the other state institutions and officials involved.
Fourteen months, three judgments
The case has run through the Saudi courts and this desk’s coverage since September.
On 17 September 2026, an appellate court in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province sentenced Anojan — a worker from Kalmunai — to death over a Facebook post the court deemed offensive. This desk reported the sentence the following day.
What followed was one of the most sustained public campaigns of the year: a presidential clemency appeal, an intervention by former Maldivian president Mohamed Nasheed, religious leaders gathering at Gangaramaya, a Hindu Munnani petition in Chennai, an appeal by the Mahanayake Theros for state intervention and a legal delegation flown to the Kingdom.
An appeal was filed in the Supreme Court, and the death sentence was set aside days later, with the matter referred back for a fresh hearing. Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, O.L. Ameer Ajwad, visited him at Dammam Central Prison on 26 October to brief him on the process ahead.
That fresh hearing will now not take place.
A date that does not match our record
The Daily Mirror’s account dates the quashing of the death sentence to 14 October. This desk’s reporting at the time, and the Saudi Supreme Court record it was based on, put the ruling itself on 13 October, announced in Colombo on the 14th. The one-day gap is almost certainly ruling date versus announcement date rather than a conflict, but the Daily Mirror’s filing does not distinguish them.
Not reported
Neither filing says when Anojan will actually be released from detention, where he is being held now, or what his condition is. Neither says whether he has been able to speak to his family, whether his passport and travel documents have been returned, or who will pay for his repatriation.
No Saudi official is quoted in either filing, and neither carries the Public Prosecution’s own reasoning for withdrawing the case. Nothing is said about the device confiscated or the social media account closed under the original judgment, nor whether Anojan faces any process in Sri Lanka on his return.
A note on sourcing. The Daily Mirror’s filing carries no reporter byline — its metadata records the author as “Administrator,” which on this masthead typically marks a submitted statement rather than desk reporting. Both filings appeared within five minutes of each other on Wednesday evening and both rest on the same ministerial announcement, so the two newsrooms here corroborate that the minister said this, not the underlying facts independently. Searches of NewsFirst, EconomyNext, the Island, Daily FT and news.lk found no separate account of Monday’s prosecutorial decision at the time of writing; those outlets’ most recent Anojan coverage concerns the October ruling.
