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Presenter(William Edmundson) : All eyes will be on the Sri Lankan Supreme Court on Friday it
is due to consider a petition calling for the release of opposition leader General Sarath Fonseka. His arrest earlier this week has prompted protests by his supporters. The General led the Army during its defeat last year of the Tamil tigers and went on to contest and lose
Presidential election. He is due to be tried by a military court so if the Supreme Court orders the General’s release, will the government respect this ruling and let him free. The question I put to Nihal Jayasinghe, the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in London.
HE the High Commissioner: Of course, the government has no choice because the Supreme Court is the supreme judicial body and the government will have to follow. There is no way that the government can defy.
Presenter : In which case why is the General being tried in a military court if you are respecting a civilian court ?
HE the High Commissioner: No. He was an Army officer and the offences that the government alleged that he has committed was committed during the period he served as the General in the Army, so the Army act applies to him and he has been brought before a court martial that
after the preliminary stages have been exhausted, that’s the way it looks.
Presenter : What are the offences exactly ?
HE the High Commissioner: That as a member of the Security Council he has been engaged in political activity.
Presenter: Because you will know that his wife has said at no point did he mix the two activities that is political activities followed his military activities.
HE the High Commissioner: Lot of wives don’t know what their husbands do.
Presenter: But, what do you say to what she is being saying, she has met him in prisons, hasn’t she ?
HE the High Commissioner: Yes, she has met him in prisons but as to what he was doing in his capacity as General, the political over tones, I don’t think his wife knows or the wife perhaps might know and she is pretending ignorance. We don’t know that.
Presenter: Well she has visited him in prisons so presumably he has told her what the situation as far as he understands it. We can’t speak to him, she is saying that the two were not mixed.
HE the High Commissioner: That’s a presumption. So what exactly has happened, we will know once the summary of evidence gets underway.
Presenter: Why do you think the General was taken in such a way from his office? It doesn’t look good, does it, dragged from his office on Monday?
HE the High Commissioner: He questioned the authority of the arresting officer. Now, the arresting officer you will understand is also carrying out instructions. When the General refused to comply, they had to bodily take him away from where he was. So this story that his
being dragged out and all that is not true.
Presenter: Well it is true you seem to say that he refused to go willingly. You seem to be saying that because he refused to go willingly, he was therefore dragged?
HE the High Commissioner: Yes. He was not dragged in the way that the media seems to project. When he refused to accompany the arresting officer, he was physically taken.
Presenter: So he was bodily taken but not dragged. So people hearing about this from the outside, they see somebody who only a few months ago was hailed as a war hero who takes part in election and opposed the President, a few weeks afterwards he is dragged from his offices?
HE the High Commissioner: When there is assistance, there will be the reaction by the arresting officer.
Presenter: My point is really my more general point apart from whether he was dragged or taken away, it doesn’t look good, does it? Because he is someone who played such an undeniably important role in the victory, takes part in the elections against the President. And just
a few weeks later he was dragged from his office and put in prison?
HE the High Commissioner: No. no it is the media what is trying to do is to give the impression that he has been arrested just because he ran against the President. He has been arrested not because he ran against the President, because he has been engaged in certain amount
of subversion.
Presenter: Because the General Fonseka’s lawyer says that this is revenge, he says this is vengeance for opposing the government ?
HE the High Commissioner: If you look at the election results, he was a non starter right from the beginning. He was no threat at all. He was only a military officer, he was no politician, he projected no a threat. He polled only 40% of the votes that turned out at the
polling stations so he was no threat. There was no political mileage the government could have got by taking him into custody unless he has transgressed the law.
Presenter: That was Nihal Jayasinghe, Sri Lankan High Commissioner in London.
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