(COLOMBO) – A prominent legal advocacy group in Sri Lanka has urged President Ranil Wickremesinghe to immediately terminate the appointment of Deshabandu Tennakoon as Acting IGP in view of the recently delivered Supreme Court judgment that found him and several other officers guilty of torture and other irregularities.
The Lawyers’ Collective, in a letter to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, has drawn his attention to the fact that the officers that include Deshabandu Tennakoon, have been found liable of acts which in the country’s law amount to a criminal offence under the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Act, No. 22 of 1994.
The Lawyers’ Collective is of the view that all police officers found responsible must be formally charged with the serious crime of torture with immediate effect and they must be suspended from service.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court held that the respondents, including the incumbent Acting IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon, have violated the fundamental rights of a former soldier to freedom from torture, unlawful arrest, and arbitrary administrative action that denied equal protection of the law.
The Lawyers’ Collective observed that a failure to act amounts to a daily reminder to the public that the President would not implement a judgement of the highest court of the country which has exercised the judicial power of the people under the Constitution.
