Justice continues to fail victims

The Supreme Court last week overruled the verdict by the High Court that had found former Prisons’ Commissioner Emil Ranjan Lamahewage guilty in connection with the Welikada prison massacre that killed 27 inmates in 2012. Lamahewage has now been acquitted, leaving no one accountable for one of the worst incidents of violence within the prison system.

The high court trial at bar judgement in 2022, itself was disappointing for the victims. The court found only Lamahewage guilty of the murder of one person, Dewamullage Malith Sameera Perera, and acquitted two others charged by the Attorney General. Despite judicial confirmation that State officials carried out a pre-planned extrajudicial killing of 27 inmates, the high court judgment was minimalistic, finding only Lamahewage guilty of the murder of one inmate. With the Supreme Court now acquitting Lamahewage, even that bare minimum justice for the victims has been denied.

Continuing Sri Lanka’s pathetic record of holding those responsible for large-scale violations, there seems to be no one responsible, either by commission or omission, for the killing of 27 individuals while in State custody.

The Welikada massacre of 2012 was ruthless not only because it exacted a heavy death toll, but because the prisoners were hand-picked for execution. There is a desire on the part of the authorities to define the violence as a “riot” rather than a massacre. However, the evidence presented during the trial against Lamahewa and others told a different story. Witnesses testified that the Special Task Force personnel who entered the prison gates had a list of would-be targets and inmates heard the STF unit seek out those prisoners marked for execution. The fact that the incident happened during the tenure of the all-powerful defence secretary who was then harbouring a so-called ‘monitoring member of parliament’ within his ministry who allegedly had close ties to the underworld and the drug mafia heightened suspicions that this was indeed a State-sponsored hit job for individual and business interest.

The Criminal Investigation Department’s investigations into the massacre only began five years after the fact, and revealed many disturbing findings, including that this massacre was pre-planned. The Special Task Force had entered the prison to supposedly “find narcotics” hidden inside. According to the State prosecutor, eight prisoners were called out by name and killed execution-style. Weapons were later introduced to make it look like the victims had tried to fire at jail guards, according to court documents.

The culture of impunity that allows for the summary execution of individuals under State detention will no doubt continue. As a country with a history of political violence resulting in over 100,000 cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings since 1971, the justice system has offered little redress to the victims. Despite this astonishingly high number of outstanding cases, there are hardly any investigations or prosecutions to bring those responsible to justice. It is therefore deeply frustrating that the highest court of the land has now overruled a guilty verdict in a rare case of accountability for an emblematic massacre.

Even to this date, there are frequent reports of individuals, especially those linked to the narcotics trade, being extrajudicially executed while in custody. Such blatant violations by the State have been made possible with seeming impunity because hardly anyone is ever held accountable for such criminal activity. The recent verdict has once again highlighted the inability of the Sri Lankan judiciary to offer redress to countless victims of atrocities committed by the State.