Was Sathyaseelan abducted due to the leaking of the Commission report?

Saturday, 28 January 2012

Details are now being unraveled about the reason for the abduction of 34 year old Sathyaseelan Sathyarajan from the Trincomalee high security zone (HSZ) in a white van at 5.30 a.m. on January 22nd. Sathyaseelan works as Sinhala-Tamil translator in parliament on a contract basis.

The report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission had been given to the parliament’s language translations division to be translated.

On a directive by the Defence Ministry, the CID is inquiring as to how electronic copies of the report were made available to certain foreign organizations before it was officially released and Sathyaseelan it is learnt has been abducted following details unraveled during the investigation.

Evidence has now been received to states that the abduction had taken place in the Trincomalee HSZ with knowledge of the police and although Sathyaseelan’s wife had complained about the abduction to the Harbor Police, the police officers had gone to investigate the matter only after about 11 hours.

A Sinhalese police constable had taken down the complaint that was made in Tamil. The complaint had been written down by a Sinhalese constable while there were many Tamil police constables present in the police station at the time. The Sinhalese constable had been used to delay the recording of the statement.

The abduction of a parliament translator should have been investigated more aggressively although the person was employed on a contract basis. It is evident that the Harbor Police is not showing interest in pursuing the investigation due to orders from a higher office.