Sudharman yet to be arrested
- Saturday, 09 November 2013
The police have taken measures to arrest 230 persons who have been accused of committing various frauds. These persons have had 549 complaints of fraud against them and the arrests have been made after lengthy investigations and warrants have been issued against nine of the arrested persons.
Interestingly, the police are yet to arrest Deputy General Manager of ITN, Sudharman Radaliyagoda who has two arrest warrants issued by court against him.
Radaliyagoda has been charged of committing a fraud of forging documents and collecting Rs. 1.5 million from two businessmen promising to get them scrap iron.
He was issued the first warrant on June 19, 2011. When the police failed to arrest him after six months, Kaduwela magistrate Lanka Jayaratne had issued another warrant on February 9, 2012 for his arrest.
However, there had been many instances where Radaliyagoda had been seen with police officers and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa despite having an open warrant for his arrest.
It is evident that Radaliyagoda is not arrested due to his political connections.
WikiLeaks: US Had Limited Access To War Zone, Preparing War Crimes Report Is Extremely Difficult – US Ambassador
November 9, 2013
“(SBU) S/WCI Amb. Clint Williamson met July 9 in separate meetings with Jacque de Maio, ICRC Head of Operations for South Asia, Kwang-wha Kang, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights and Pascale Moreau, UNHCR Acting Director for Asia. He was accompanied by S/WCI Shaun Coughlin, RMA Counselor and PSA Counselor. In all the meetings, Amb. Williamson outlined the Congressional language attached to the recent supplemental funding legislation requiring the Secretary to report back within 45 days on reports of war crimes during the recent fighting in Sri Lanka, including to the extent possible, identification of perpetrators of such crimes. Williamson noted that the USG had limited access to the conflict zone and therefore it will be extremely difficult to present conclusive evidence about exactly what happened during the conflict, let alone who was responsible.” the US Mission to UN informed Washington.
Clint Williamson
The Colombo Telegraph found the related leaked cable from the WikiLeaks database. The “Confidential” cable discuses what had happened on the ground during and since the conflict. The cable was signed by the US Ambassador to Geneva Clint Williamson on July 15, 2009.
The ambassador wrote; “Therefore, the Department would have to rely in large part on reports from open sources, NGOs, and International Organizations that were on the ground or otherwise active on Sri Lanka during the fighting. Looking at the two sides in the conflict (Sri Lankan military and the LTTE), Williamson said that the most obvious areas of focus would be the LTTE,s reported use of human shields and child labor, as well as alleged executions of civilians attempting to flee the conflict zone. For the GSL, the focus would be on the potential disproportionate use of force and reports of disappearances of individuals during the screening of the population in the north.”
Other related stories to this cable;
