The Jaffna Magistrate’s Court has ordered former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to appear before the Colombo Magistrate’s Court on September 29 and give evidence to the Jaffna court by online link in the case concerning the alleged abduction and disappearance of activists Lalith Kumar Weeraraj and Kugan Muruganandan.
The order was issued when the case was taken up on Friday before Jaffna Chief Magistrate S. Lenin Kumar, NewsFirst reported. NewsFirst gave the date only as “the 29th” without naming a month; Hiru News reported it explicitly as September 29. The Daily Mirror, which identified the venue as the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court, reported that Rajapaksa is to appear there in person and give his evidence to the Jaffna court over an online connection.
The case
Weeraraj and Muruganandan disappeared in the Avarangal area of Jaffna on December 10, 2011, while organising a protest by relatives of the disappeared timed to coincide with International Human Rights Day, according to Hiru News. Rajapaksa was serving as Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary at the time.
Their relatives filed a habeas corpus petition before the Court of Appeal in Colombo in 2012. During the hearing of that petition, the Court of Appeal directed the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court to examine the relevant witnesses and report back on the alleged abduction, and the inquiry began there on September 19, 2012, according to the Daily Mirror. Rajapaksa’s name was added to the list of witnesses in 2017. The inquiry has run for more than a decade.
Rajapaksa was first issued notices in the case in September 2019. He later told the Supreme Court he was willing to testify, but sought to appear before a court in Colombo rather than Jaffna, citing security concerns, and was directed at one stage to put those claims on record by affidavit.
In June the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court granted him permission to testify via video link. Friday’s order fixes the date and the venue from which he is to give that evidence.
The proceedings are one of several war-era and post-war accountability cases still moving through the courts, alongside continuing excavation at the Chemmani mass grave in Jaffna.
