Convicted Army soldier given Presidential amnesty; TNA condemns

Former Army Staff Sergeant R.M. Sunil Ratnayake who was convicted with death sentence over killing eight persons in Mirusuvil, Jaffna in 2002 has been released from Welikada Prisons today following a Presidential amnesty granted by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, an official from Prison Headquarters said. 

The former Staff  Sergeant was convicted of killing eight people including three children by the High Court which was affirmed by five Bench judges of the Supreme Court last year following a 12 year trial in courts. 

On November 27, 2002, the Attorney General indicted him on 19 charges in the murder of Gnanapalan Raviveeran, Sellamuttu Theivakulasingham, Vilvarajah Pratheepan, Sinniah Vilvarajah, Nadesu Jeyachandran, Kathiran Gnanachandran, Gnanachandran Santhan and Vilvarajah Prasath in Mirusuvil of the Jaffna peninsula before a High Court at Trial-at-Bar in Colombo.

Meanwhile Tamil National Alliance (TNA) condemned the Presidential pardon saying this is a “opportunistic action of Pez ⁦@GotabayaR⁩ under guise of dealing with the issue of prisoners at a time like this. This is one case in which a person was actually convicted. Other cases weren’t even prosecuted or were acquitted,” a tweet from TNA official twitter handle said hours after the amnesty granted.