Jaffna lawyers tell SL Minister to prove political will in releasing Tamil prisoners

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 November 2015, 23:20 GMT]
Lawyers from Jaffna district, who met the SL Justice Minister Mr Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe in Jaffna on Tuesday urged the Colombo government to release all the Tamil political prisoners rotting in the jails without looking at their cases through criminal or legal procedures. The SL minister was visiting Jaffna to stage a deceptive campaign claiming that the SL Attorney General was prepared to grant bail to a considerable number of prisoners and that all the cases of the persons detained by the notorious ‘Terrorist Investigation Department’ (TID) have been transferred to the office of the SL Attorney General.



Mr Rajapakshe didn't have the figures of the Tamils detained by the TID at the moment.

Mr Rajapakshe was claiming that there were 48 convicted Tamil fighters in the SL prisons. Indictment was missing in 116 cases and that investigations were still pending on 52 cases, he further said.

The lawyers in Jaffna were demanding the SL minister to deal with the issue politically rather than through the SL judiciary as in the case with the JVP political prisoners in the past.

However, the visiting SL minister was maintaining that it was up to the office of the SL Attorney General to expedite the cases of the prisoners.

The SL Attorney General was prepared to consider release or military ‘rehabilitation’ in certain cases that were of ‘not serious’ character, Wijedasa Rajapakshe said.

Lawyer N. Srikantha, who was a former TNA parliamentarian, told media that he was aware of at least 6 cases of Tamil political prisoners rotting in the notorious Boosa camp in South without facing trials. Former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has detained them through a written instruction to the prison authorities, he said.

The lawyers met the SL minister at the complex of the High Court of Jaffna.

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