FR petitions filed by four students allegedly coerced to implicate Hejaaz Hizbullah granted leave to proceed

The Supreme Court yesterday granted leave to proceed in four fundamental rights petitions filed by four students of a Madrasa school in Puttalam claiming they were coerced by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to implicate Attorney-at-Law Hejaaz Hizbullah over terrorism-related charges connected to the Easter Sunday attacks. The petitioners, all under the age of 14 at the time, said they were forcibly taken to the CID without guardians present, threatened and recorded on video and forced to place their signatures on documents they could not read. They have accused the CID of attempting to illegally obtain testimony from them that teachers at their school were preaching violence and extremism and providing weapons training to students. The students have denied these facts in their filings before the Supreme Court. The IGP, the Director of the CID and the Attorney General have been named as respondents of the cases.

The petitioning minors have asked the court to issue interim orders directing the IGP and the CID to immediately produce the arrest notes and other documents related to the detention of the boys to the Supreme Court, produce the video recording of the petitioner for perusal by the court and produce the purported paper on which the boys were forced to place their signatures. They have also requested the court to declare the acts of the respondents have violated their fundamental rights and grant them suitable compensation. The four students from low-income families had been provided scholarships to study at the Al-Zuhriya Arabic College in Karaitivu funded by the Save the Pearls charity, of which Hejaaz Hizbullah was a trustee.

Hejaaz Hizbullah was arrested in April 2020 and accused of being linked to the attacks on churches and hotels that left 279 people dead. After prosecutors failed to provide evidence of his involvement in the attacks, blamed on a local group, he was instead charged with inciting racial hatred under Sri Lanka’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). On 7 February 2022, Hizbullah was granted bail by the Court of Appeal after almost two years of pre-trial detention.