The Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPGT) has called on the torture victims in the Britain to join a civil lawsuit that has been filed against Sri Lanka’s former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Paul Scully said the APPGT welcomed the news of the lawsuit, of which Rajapaksa was served notice of on Sunday whilst he was in California.
“We hope the hundreds of victims of torture in Sri Lanka under the Rajapaksa administration who are now refugees in the UK can join this action and also seek compensation,” said Scully in a letter released earlier today.
See the full text of the letter below.
Rajapaksa was served notice of a case filed by the International Truth and Justice Project and the American law firm Hausfield on behalf of Tamil torture survivor Roy Samathanam.
Samathanam described how his experience of torture at the hands of Sri Lankan security forces "never goes away", at a press conference in London yesterday. “The images I saw, the girls who were there and the guys were being sexually assaulted, I can still remember their faces and I can still remember what happened.”
Another case was also filed against the former defence secretary filed by another organisation on behalf of assassinated Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunga. The second lawsuit was filed by Ahimsa Wickrematunge seeking damages from Rajapaksa for instigating and authorizing the extrajudicial killing of her father, who was the former Editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper.
