Court orders immediate arrest of suspects in Hikkaduwa church attacks
Friday, 17 January 2014 00:09
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By Dharisha Bastians
The Galle Magistrate Court yesterday ordered the immediate arrest of suspects involved in last Sunday’s attacks on two churches in Hikkaduwa and orally reprimanded the Police for failing to make arrests so far.
Police informed the Court that they had identified 26 suspects involved in the church attacks when the case came up before Court yesterday.
Police said there were 10 Buddhist monks among the identified suspects.
Galle Additional Magistrate Gunendra Munasinghe orally reprimanded the Police for failing to arrest the suspects involved in the attacks and issued an order for their immediate arrest.
The Additional Magistrate also ordered media institutions to provide unedited media footage of the attacks to the Police in order to assist with ongoing investigations into the incident.
The case will be called again on 27 January.
Assemblies of God Hikkaduwa and the Calvary Free Church were set upon by mobs of demonstrators last Sunday (12). The violent protests were led by a monk-led organisation calling itself the Hela Bodu Pawura.
The mobs caused severe damage to property and religious material in both churches. The demonstrators were claiming that the two Christian churches were operating without authorisation.
