Death sentence

FIVE soldiers and a policeman were sentenced to death by a specially constituted High Court without a jury, in the Krishanthy Kumarasamy murder case on 3 July in Colombo. The charges were rape and murder of Krishanthy and the murder of her mother Rajammah, brother Pranavan and neighbour S Kirubamurthy in September 1996 in Jaffna. This is the first time severe punishment has been imposed for human rights violations by security forces. While Amnesty International described the court decision as a landmark judgment, other agencies urged the government to continue to bring security force personnel accused of human rights abuses to book and end the climate of impunity, without merely using the Krishanthy case for propaganda purposes. Many deaths and several alleged rapes remain uninvestigated and doubts remain over follow-up action in the case of disappearances. One of the accused, Somaratne Rajapakse, blamed his superior officers for disappearances in Jaffna and claimed that he knows the location at Chemmani in Jaffna where 400 bodies of people killed in custody were buried. Some 700 disappearances were reported in Jaffna since the Army capture of the peninsula in early 1996.

Concerns remain over continuing detentions. Over 600 people, staged a protest in front of the Nallur Kandasamy temple on 26 June demanding concrete government action over disappearances. On 19 June, the Colombo Magistrates Court committed the Rajani Velayuthapillai case for trial to the High Court. In this case, four soldiers are accused of the rape and murder of Rajani in September 1996 in Jaffna. The High Court in Trincomalee granted bail in June for 18 policemen and Home Guards accused of the massacre of eight Tamils at Pokkuruni in Thambalakamam on 1 February.

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