Judge Warawewa’s computer data deleted

Monday, 21 November 2011

High Court Judge Warawewa had typed the verdict of the controversial White Flag case against former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka on the 17th evening and had shut down the computer before locking his office room and leaving.

However, some person had secretly entered the office room and had deleted all the data in the judge’s computer.

Judge Warawewa had returned to his office on the 18th morning when he was scheduled to deliver the White Flag verdict and had realized that the data in the computer had been deleted when he switched on the computer to get a print out of the verdict typed the previous evening.

The head of the High Court bench of judges, Deepali Wijesundera had to delay the verdict that was scheduled to be delivered at 10.30 a.m. since Judge Warawewa had to re-type the entire verdict on the 18th morning.

Although the usual practice is to announce the verdict of the judges when there is a divided verdict on a case, this time around, Judge Deepali Wijesundera had not permitted the reading of Judge Warawewa’s verdict.

Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe revealed many details related to the case at a public rally in Dematagoda on the 20th.

The Opposition Leader said that Sarath Fonseka was jailed on the evidence given by The Sunday Leader Editor Frederic Jansz and that she had not agreed to run a correction on a misleading report published by her although he had made such a request.

The Opposition Leader had then distributed a leaflet with a note of a clear explanation made by Judge Warawewa on Jansz’ evidence to court.

The note has read that the witness continuously changed her stance and revealed false details and made false representations in a stubborn manner while forming false reports in violation of a court order. Whenever there were any doubts over the evidence given by her, she would make the statement in different ways and never made any direct comment other than attributing every comment to another person.

The note has further stated that the evidence given could not be considered to be true since the owner of The Sunday Leader was not summoned, the failure to take a voice recorder and the statement made to Derana TV that she had a voice recording and the publishing of a report that appeared in the Daily Mirror of May 21st, 2009 with a few changes.

Judge Warawewa has also stated that the charge of making up a story and spreading it has been done by Jansz and the owner of The Sunday leader newspaper Lal Wickrematunge.