Attorney-at-law and former minister Udaya Gammanpila on Sunday rejected reports that he had been barred from representing retired State Intelligence Service Chief Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay, telling reporters at his Pita Kotte party office that “a lawyer could not be deprived of his or her right to represent a client.”
The Pivuthuru Hela Urumaya leader said Sallay’s wife had named him as her husband’s lawyer in a letter addressed to the Director of the Criminal Investigation Department, and that the courts, police and Attorney General’s Department could not “under any circumstances interfere with his right to represent Sallay.”
Gammanpila pointed to the Constitution, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Judicial Organisation Act as multiple guarantees of a suspect’s right to counsel. Even if a magistrate had the authority to prohibit a particular lawyer, he said, that step could not be taken without giving the lawyer concerned an opportunity to explain his actions. Disciplinary action against a practising lawyer could only be taken by the Supreme Court, he added, saying he had requested certified copies of the proceedings on the day a section of the media reported a purported ban.
Sallay was arrested by the CID on February 25 and detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for 90 days, and is now named the third suspect in the Easter Sunday case. He has filed a writ petition before the Court of Appeal challenging his arrest and detention. Sallay served as Director of the Directorate of Military Intelligence from 2012 to 2016 and headed SIS from late 2019 until early October 2024.
Gammanpila also said he could not be barred from speaking to the media after meeting Sallay, or from authoring a book on the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, provided his client had no objection — pushing back against what he described as warnings from Additional Solicitor General Dileepa Peiris.
