The Jaffna Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday granted former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa permission to testify via video link in the long-running habeas corpus inquiry into the enforced disappearance of activists Lalith Kumar Weeraraj and Kugan Murugananthan in 2011.
The two activists, both members of the Movement for the Release of Political Prisoners, went missing on December 9, 2011 in Jaffna. The habeas corpus petition was filed by their relatives and has been pending for years. Rajapaksa, who served as Defence Secretary at the time of the incident, was first issued notices in the case on September 27, 2019.
Court records show that Rajapaksa had previously given an undertaking to the Supreme Court that he was willing to testify before the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court. He later cited unspecified “security concerns” and sought to give evidence through contemporaneous electronic audiovisual means, and failed to appear in December last year when his lawyers cited threats to his life. The court at the time told the defence that such claims must be formally presented before proceedings could continue.
Tuesday’s order allows Rajapaksa, who is resident abroad, to give evidence remotely, paving the way for the continuation of the inquiry.
The case is one of several war-era and post-war accountability proceedings that have continued under successive governments. Excavation work at the Chemmani mass grave in Jaffna entered its sixth phase in May with 245 remains recovered, and Tamil National Alliance constituent ITAK has pushed bipartisan responses on reconciliation and transitional justice with foreign missions.
