AG explores possibility of transferring Tamil prisoners’ appeal to Vavuniya High Court

By S.S. Selvanayagam

The Attorney General this week told the Supreme Court that the possibility of transferring the Tamil prisoners’ case back to the Vavuniya High Court from the Anuradhapura High Court was being explored.

 Senior State Counsel Azad Navavi told Court that two laymen witnesses who are ex-LTTE cadres had been hesitant to testify in the Vavuniya High Court for security reasons but one of them had now expressed his opinion to testify in the Vavuniya High Court but the other lay witness has to be located for his opinion.

He asked for time to do so and the Court fixed the matter to be mentioned on 29 November.

Tamil prisoners who embarked on a hunger strike calling for the their case to be transferred back to the Vavuniya High Court from the Anuradhapura High Court had filed an appeal in the Court of Appeal against the Attorney General and the Terrorist Investigation Division(TID).

Petitioners Rajathurai Thiruvarul, Mathiarasan Sulakshan and Ganeshan Dharshan filed theirs through Attorney M.K.P. Chandralal.

They stated that they were arrested by the TID and produced before the Magistrate and committed to fiscal custody. They stated that they were remanded in various prisons and were presently being kept at the Anuradhapura Prison. They state that they were indicted by then Attorney General in the High Court of Vavuniya in 2013 and their case was called 58 times without a trial being initiated. Finally the Vavuniya High Court Judge fixed the case for trial for two days in September 2017, they say.

While the case was so fixed for trial in September 2017 in the High Court of Vavuniya, the Attorney General moved to transfer the case to the High Court of Anuradhapura, they assert.

They claim that they do not have any relatives or friends in Anuradhapura and they speak only Tamil and that it will be very hard for their family members to use a language of their choice in the Anuradhapura High Court for their defence and to understand proceedings in the case.

They lament that they will be denied a fair trial in the Anuradhapura High Court and draw attention to the fact that out of the 67 witnesses in the case, 64 are from the Police and Armed Forces.

They contend that therefore there is no fair reason for the Attorney General to transfer the case from the Vavuniya High Court to the Anuradhapura High Court in the present improved security context.