Update, 21 September evening: the President meets the parents and opens the royal-pardon track

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake met Sivarasa Anojan’s parents at the Presidential Secretariat on Monday morning (21) and told them the Government will make a formal written diplomatic appeal to the King of Saudi Arabia seeking a pardon, the Daily Mirror reported.

That answers the question this article has carried since Friday. The approach to the Saudi monarch had until now been an initiative of individual parliamentarians — Rishad Bathiudeen’s cross-party plan, Ali Sabry’s appeal, Faiszer Musthapha’s legal framing. It is now state policy, put in writing by the head of state.

The President said the Government was making every possible effort to secure a pardon through both legal and diplomatic channels, briefed the parents on appeals the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already submitted, and said it was monitoring progress and would pursue all available avenues.

The commitment is in the President’s own words

The pledge is not a briefing relayed at second hand. Dissanayake set it out on his own official Facebook account, Hiru News reported, which carries the statement in full:

“I met the parents of Sivaraasa Anojan, a Sri Lankan national who has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia, at the Presidential Secretariat this morning. I explained that the government is making every possible effort to secure a pardon for Mr Sivaraasa Anojan and is intervening through both legal and diplomatic channels. In particular, I stated that steps would be taken to make a formal written diplomatic appeal to the King of Saudi Arabia seeking a pardon for him. His parents were also briefed on the official measures already taken by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the submission of appeals. I further assured them that we are continuously and closely monitoring the progress of these efforts.”

That matters for a detail this article has been careful about since Friday. Every account of the death sentence so far has been reported — sourced to Foreign Ministry officials, to the family, or to the lawyer, with the written judgment still not confirmed as having reached Riyadh. The President’s statement is the first time the head of state has described Anojan as “sentenced to death” in his own published words. Hiru reads it as the government officially confirming the sentence.

It does not confirm that the judgment has arrived. It does confirm that the government is no longer treating the sentence as an unverified report.

The Attorney General’s Department enters the case

The second new element is institutional. The Attorney General’s Department says steps will be taken to file the appeal before the Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia within the stipulated 30-day period, NewsFirst reported. The matter was discussed by the President together with the Attorney General and other institutional heads.

Until Monday the Supreme Court appeal was described as something the Embassy in Riyadh was arranging with the family. It is now being driven by Sri Lanka’s own chief law officer. The one-month deadline first reported on Friday is unchanged, and the state has now formally attached itself to it.

The two tracks run in parallel: the Supreme Court appeal is a legal remedy inside the Saudi courts, the royal pardon a sovereign act outside them. Nothing in Monday’s reporting says whether a pardon request would be lodged before or after the appeal is decided.

Why the appeal produced a heavier sentence — a partial answer

NewsFirst supplies the first account of the procedural step that has been missing since Friday. After the Al-Ahsa Criminal Court’s original sentence of five years and three million Saudi riyals, Anojan’s side lodged an appeal — and a separate application challenging that appeal was also submitted to the court. The death sentence followed the determination of both sets of proceedings.

This article has asked since Friday why an appeal against a five-year sentence was capable of producing a capital one. A counter-application by the opposing side is the mechanism, and it removes the apparent paradox: the appellate court was not only reviewing Anojan’s challenge. NewsFirst does not say who filed the counter-application, on what grounds, or whether Anojan’s lawyers were on notice that the sentence was open to increase.

Parliament will hear from the Foreign Minister on Tuesday

Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath will make a special statement in Parliament on Tuesday (22) on the case. He confirmed it directly to the Daily Mirror. Herath was present at the morning meeting with Anojan’s parents, and said the Ministry has been continuously monitoring the matter through the Sri Lankan Embassy in Saudi Arabia and engaging Saudi authorities.

That is the government’s answer to Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, who said on Friday he would raise the case in Parliament this week — a minister will now speak to it first.

The family’s embassy visit went ahead

The relatives did go to the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Colombo on Monday and submitted an appeal seeking relief, NewsFirst reports. Monday morning’s update recorded the visit as planned; it took place.

What Monday does not settle

The government is now acting on the death sentence as an established fact — seeking a pardon for it and appealing it. No filing yet says the written judgment has reached Riyadh. The Daily Mirror’s own account of Monday still describes the Foreign Ministry’s position as monitoring a case “currently undergoing judicial proceedings,” and no outlet reports the document arriving. The state has moved faster than its paperwork.

Also unanswered: the value or wording of the pardon appeal, whether Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister has yet spoken to his Saudi counterpart, who represented Anojan at the appeal that produced the death sentence, and whether the three-million-riyal fine survives alongside it.

Update, 21 September: the family goes to the embassy, and Anojan phones home

Anojan Sivarasa’s relatives were due at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Colombo on Monday (21) to seek details of his case, Hiru News reported.

The most significant new fact is that Anojan telephoned his family on Sunday (20), urging them to act quickly to secure his release. That is the first indication in any filing that he is able to make contact — and it establishes he was alive and reachable on 20 September.

It also underlines what has not moved. The family is approaching the Saudi embassy in Colombo for information, three days after the Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh said it was awaiting the written judgment. The relatives are seeking from a foreign mission the basic case details their own government has not been able to obtain.

Public campaigning has widened beyond Parliament:

Three separate districts — Ampara, Batticaloa and Nuwara Eliya — now carry public action on the case.

Still unreported: whether the embassy visit took place, what the family was told, whether the written judgment has reached Riyadh, and whether the royal pardon track has formally opened.

A Sri Lankan man serving a five-year sentence in Saudi Arabia over alleged defamatory remarks against Islam has reportedly had that sentence increased to capital punishment by an appellate court, the Daily Mirror reported on Friday, citing sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The man is named as Anojan Sivarasa. The Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh was verbally informed by his lawyer, who was present at the proceedings, that the sentence had been enhanced. The Embassy is awaiting the formal written judgment from the Saudi judicial authorities, which will set out the official details and the legal basis of the decision.

The sentence was increased on his own appeal

The sequence matters. Sivarasa had already been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of three million Saudi riyals. The riyal is pegged at 3.75 to the US dollar, which puts the fine at about US$800,000.

His lawyer submitted an appeal memorandum to the competent appellate court in the Eastern Region of Saudi Arabia on August 25, 2026. It is that appeal — filed on his behalf, roughly three and a half weeks earlier — which has reportedly produced the death sentence rather than a reduction.

What the government is doing

The matter has been raised with the Chargé d’Affaires of the Saudi Embassy in Colombo, with the government conveying its own deep concern and that of Sivarasa’s family.

The lawyer has advised that the judgment may be appealed to the Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia within one month. The Embassy, acting under the Ministry’s guidance and in coordination with Sivarasa’s next of kin, is taking steps to lodge that appeal inside the deadline.

The Ministry said it remains engaged through diplomatic and bilateral channels and continues to provide consular assistance to Sivarasa and his family, while “respecting the judicial processes and laws of Saudi Arabia.”

Update: a second newsroom fills in who he is, and where he was tried

Hiru News carried the case later on Friday, and its two filings supply most of the particulars the Daily Mirror left out.

Sivarasa Anojan is a resident of Kalmunai, in the Ampara district. He was working in Saudi Arabia when he was first sentenced. The original sentence — five years and the three-million-riyal fine — was passed by the Al-Ahsa Criminal Court, which sits in the kingdom’s Eastern Province. That is consistent with the Daily Mirror’s account of an appeal memorandum filed to the appellate court for the Eastern Region on 25 August: the appeal went up within the same region as the trial court.

The case against him concerned a post on Facebook. Neither outlet says what the post said, when it was published, or how it came to the attention of the Saudi authorities.

Hiru also dates the enhanced sentence. Citing MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, it reports that the death penalty was handed down on Thursday, 17 September — the day before the Foreign Ministry’s statement and the first date attached to the appellate ruling by any outlet.

An MP takes it to Parliament

Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, Parliamentary Group Leader of the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi and MP for the Batticaloa district, called for immediate top-level diplomatic intervention to save Anojan’s life, and said he intends to question the government in Parliament next week on shortcomings in the appeal process and on the extent of the Foreign Ministry’s intervention.

He said the priority now was saving the life of an innocent Sri Lankan rather than assigning blame, and set out four steps he wants taken immediately:

The first of those is the same document the Embassy in Riyadh is already waiting for, and the second bears on a question no outlet has asked: who represented Anojan at the appeal that produced the death sentence, and on whose advice the appeal was filed at all.

The Ministry’s own account, and the family’s

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism said in a statement on Friday that it is acting to safeguard Anojan’s rights and provide assistance by engaging Saudi authorities at diplomatic level through the Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh, and that it is monitoring the proceedings in coordination with the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Colombo. That restates the position in the Daily Mirror’s account rather than advancing it.

Separately, Anojan’s mother has publicly appealed to the government to secure her son’s release, Hiru reported. The report does not quote her directly, name her, or say where or to whom the appeal was made.

Context

Saudi Arabia is one of the largest destinations for Sri Lankan migrant labour, and consular cases there have twice become national political issues — most prominently in the case of Rizana Nafeek, the domestic worker executed in the kingdom in 2013 despite a clemency campaign backed by the Sri Lankan government.

Sri Lanka itself retains the death penalty in law but has not carried out an execution in decades. The government said this week that no decision has been taken to resume executions, after the President ruled out pardons for underworld convicts. Sri Lankan courts continue to impose the sentence — the Chilaw High Court passed a death sentence in a heroin case this week.

Update (September 19): the post was deleted and apologised for, and MPs are organising

What the post was — the first account of it

The single largest gap in Friday’s reporting has partly closed, and it comes from a former foreign minister rather than from either government.

Ali Sabry, who served as Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, said he is appealing to Saudi authorities to grant Anojan clemency. In doing so he gave the first description anyone has offered of what happened after the post went up: it was removed, and an apology was made, immediately after the mistake was realised.

Sabry called a death sentence for such an act — “especially when it was removed and an apology was made immediately after realizing the mistake” — merciless and unjust, and said urgent diplomatic intervention was required. He made the statement on social media, Hiru News reported.

This is material to the case rather than merely sympathetic: retraction and apology are ordinarily mitigating, and no outlet has reported whether either was put before the appellate court that increased the sentence.

It still does not establish what the post actually said, when it was published, or how long it stood before deletion.

A cross-party effort takes shape

Former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen visited Anojan’s family home on Thursday 18 September, meeting his mother and other family members. Hiru gives the locality as Narpattimunai, Kalmunai — NewsFirst spells the same place Natpittimunai; the two reports are describing one address.

Bathiudeen said the reports have caused deep concern in the Muslim community, and set out a plan to unite Muslim parliamentarians behind a special appeal addressed both to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and to the King of Saudi Arabia. He said he also hopes to secure the intervention of the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama (ACJU).

Three MPs have pledged support by telephone: Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, Shanakiyan Rasamanickam and Mano Ganesan.

That list is the notable part. Rasamanickam (ITAK, Batticaloa) had already called for top-level diplomatic intervention; he is now joined by Ponnambalam of the Tamil National People’s Front and Ganesan of the Democratic People’s Front, alongside Bathiudeen and Sabry. A Tamil man from the east facing execution in Saudi Arabia has produced a Tamil–Muslim parliamentary bloc acting together, and an approach that runs to the Saudi monarch directly rather than only through the courts.

A royal pardon is a separate track from the Supreme Court appeal the Embassy is preparing. Neither outlet says whether the two are being coordinated, or whether the government endorses the appeal to the King.

The Foreign Ministry’s formal statement does not mention the death sentence

NewsFirst carried the Ministry’s own statement on Saturday morning, and what it omits is worth recording.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism said it is closely following Anojan Sivarasa’s case, monitoring developments through the Embassy in Riyadh and in coordination with the Saudi Embassy in Colombo, that diplomatic discussions with Saudi authorities are underway, and that it is taking appropriate steps to safeguard his interests.

The statement describes him as sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and fined three million Saudi riyals for posting content on social media deemed insulting to a religion. It does not refer to the reported enhancement to a death sentence at all, and NewsFirst’s headline follows the five-year framing.

This is not necessarily a contradiction — Friday’s account was explicit that the enhanced sentence rests on a verbal report from Anojan’s lawyer and that the Embassy is still awaiting the written judgment. A ministry that has not received a judgment may be declining to state its contents as fact. But it means that as of Saturday morning, no Sri Lankan government document has confirmed the death sentence in writing, and readers should hold the two sentences in that order: five years is the confirmed sentence of record; capital punishment is a reported enhancement still awaiting written confirmation.

A President’s Counsel sets out the legal route — and confirms the judgment still has not arrived

Later on Saturday, Faiszer Musthapha, MP and President’s Counsel, called for immediate diplomatic and legal intervention, Hiru News reported.

The most important thing in his statement is not the appeal itself but a fact he states in passing: the Sri Lankan Embassy has still not received the official written copy of the Saudi court judgment. That is now the third day running on which the written judgment is outstanding, and it confirms directly what this article has recorded since Friday — the entire account of the death sentence continues to rest on a verbal report from Anojan’s lawyer. Musthapha urged authorities to obtain the document without delay so that the legal basis of the ruling can be understood at all.

On the legal route, Musthapha — who is speaking as a President’s Counsel rather than only as a politician — said that on the advice available, the opportunity to appeal to the Saudi Supreme Court should be used immediately. That aligns with the one-month deadline the Embassy is already working to.

He also gave the deletion and apology a specific legal function. Where Ali Sabry had argued that a death sentence was merciless given the post was taken down and apologised for, Musthapha framed the same facts as material to be put before the Saudi authorities in support of humanitarian relief or a royal pardon. That is the first time any figure has said what the mitigation is actually for.

Musthapha was careful to frame the request inside Saudi jurisdiction, saying he respects the kingdom’s sovereignty and legal framework while arguing that exhausting every legal and humanitarian measure on behalf of a Sri Lankan citizen must be the priority. He called for high-level engagement resting on the long-standing bilateral relationship, and urged government and opposition to act together across party lines — consistent with the cross-party bloc described above.

He invoked Rizana Nafeek directly, arguing that the case shows why Sri Lankans in legal difficulty abroad need proper guidance, reliable legal representation and continuous diplomatic assistance from the outset rather than after a sentence is passed. That is a criticism of the consular system, not of Saudi Arabia, and it is the first time anyone in the current chain of statements has made it.

Not reported

Three of the gaps in the original account have now closed: the trial court is named, the home district is given, and the post is identified as having been on Facebook.

What remains unreported is what the post actually said, when it was published, when Anojan first went to Saudi Arabia, what work he did there, and how long he has been in custody. No outlet gives his age. None says whether the three-million-riyal fine stands alongside the reported death sentence, who represented him at the appeal, or why an appeal against a five-year sentence was capable of producing a capital one.

Critically, nothing has yet been confirmed in writing: the entire account of the enhanced sentence still rests on a verbal report from his lawyer to the Embassy, and the Embassy is still waiting for the written judgment. Neither Hiru filing indicates that the Ministry has received it.

Neither outlet reports any response from the government to Rasamanickam’s four demands, and none says whether the Foreign Minister has in fact sought contact with the Saudi Foreign Minister — the step the MP is pressing for.