Japan to send special prosecutor to Sri Lanka

Japanese Government told the UN Human Rights Council yesterday that it would dispatch a senior prosecutor from the country to Sri Lanka in October.

Motoo Noguchi is a former international judge of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’s Supreme Court Chamber, the very model of an ad hoc hybrid special court that was set up in 2006, comprising Cambodian and UN nominated international judges to try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime war crimes.

The move comes as Sri Lanka co-sponsored the resolution to be adopted at the council in Geneva today, that calls for the involvement of “foreign and Commonwealth judges and lawyers” in its judicial mechanism to address allegations of serious rights violations and abuses during the war.

The Japanese delegation told the council during its intervention last afternoon that Japan had long been a supporter of Sri Lanka’s own processes for reconciliation in the island. Japan said it believed that in order to make progress towards national reconciliation and improve the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, it was “imperative” to promote Sri Lanka’s own efforts to address the situation.