Nishantha Silva links GR to Lasantha’s murder
Former detective of the Criminal Investigations Department, Nishantha Silva has linked President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to the murder of journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge.Silva has assembled into a vivid picture building what he says is the complicity of Rajapaksa in the 2009 murder of journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported.
Silva believes that Rajapaksa—then Secretary of Defense—had the means, the opportunity and as, he said in a written statement, “a clear motive for killing Lasantha Wickrematunge” – to prevent the journalist from testifying against him in court.
Rajapaksa has denied any involvement in extrajudicial killings, abductions, and disappearances.Silva ran an official probe into Wickrematunge’s killing from 2015 to 2019, but his work was cut short when he fled the country after Rajapaksa, whom he had questioned in a related case and who had been accused in a civil suit filed by Wickrematunge’s daughter, Ahimsa Wickrematunge, of having “instigated and authorized the extrajudicial killing” of the journalist, was elected president.