The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka on Tuesday (May 31) suspended the presidential pardon granted to a murderer linked to the clan of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, ordering his immediate return to prison in an unprecedented decision.
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Magistrates have asked police to arrest Duminda Silva, who faced the death penalty for a murder in 2011 but was released in June after President Rajapaksa granted her a pardon.
The court ruled that a new hearing would take place on September 1, but ordered police to arrest Duminda Silva and return him to jail, a court official said.
Hirunika Premachandra, the daughter of former MP Bharatha Lakshman, who was shot dead by Silva and accomplices, appealed to the court arguing that the murderer's release was illegal.
“
This Supreme Court decision is historic
,” she told AFP.
"
No one has challenged a presidential pardon before
," she said, welcoming that the Supreme Court had "
proved its independence
".
Foreign convictions
The former MP and three of his supporters were killed in a shootout in Colombo between rival factions of the same political party.
Silva had been injured when Lakshman's bodyguards returned fire.
President Rajapaksa had appointed Silva chairman of the national housing development agency after his release in June.
His release had sparked condemnations abroad, the American ambassador believing that it undermined the rule of law in Sri Lanka.
Read alsoSri Lanka on the brink
President Rajapaksa had earlier freed an officer sentenced to death for slaughtering Tamil civilians including four children in a massacre in December 2000, during the bloody civil war between government forces and Tamil separatists.
Successive governments in Sri Lanka have dismissed claims by human rights organizations that government forces killed 40,000 Tamil civilians by the end of the conflict which ended in May 2009.
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