Supreme Court to hear Rights petition filed by jailed journalist
[TamilNet, Thursday, 20 March 2008, 12:17 GMT]
Sri Lanka Supreme Court Wednesday granted permission to hear the fundamental rights petition filed by J.S.Tissanayagam, a senior journalist at Sunday Times and Editor of the website “Outreach,” against officials of the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID), legal sources in Colombo said. The hearing is set for 27 March.
Tissanayagam in his petition listed Nandana Munasinghe of the TID, IGP Victor Perera, OIC Prasanna de Alwis, Defence Secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa and the Attorney General as respondents. Tissanayagam in his petition alleged discrimination based on his ethnicity as a Tamil and alleged mistreatment by the TID officers while under custody, and demanded compensation and punitive damages for the violation of his fundamental rights. Police officials arrested Vadivel Jasiharan, owner of a press located in the same building as the Outreach office and his wife, Valarmathi, on 6 March after searching the premises. Tissanayagam was arrested when he went to the TID to inquire about Jasiharan the following day. Three other employees at Outreach, Uthayanan, Ranga, and Wijesinghe, were also arrested by the TID on the same day. The three were released Wednesday 19 March, after being held nearly two weeks in detention.
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