Presidential probe will not be punitive – chairman

The chairman of Sri Lanka’s presidential commission into disappeared people said the probe will only be able to provide details of individuals involved in such cases, and will not be able to make decisions on punishments.

Chairman Maxwell Paranagama said any decisions on punitive measures can only be taken by President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Attorney General, while speaking to the BBC Sinhala Service.

Panaragama pointed out that although the new international advisory panel was appointed by the commission, the panel will not become “a stakeholder” in the probe.

See related articles:
Government appoints 5th expert to commission after rejecting UN inquiry (19 Aug 2014)

Further delays likely to government disappearances commission (18 Aug 2014)

Chair of govt commission accuses NGOs of inflating disappearance numbers (12 Aug 2014)

Government to add another international name to domestic commission (11 Aug 2014)

Rajapaksa invites foreign experts to disappearances commission, as international pressure escalates (17 Jul 2014)

The Tamil National Alliance, the Tamil National People's Front, and the prominent civil society campaigner, the Bishop of Mannar, have criticised the domestic inquiry, stating it is unable to provide justice to the Tamils.

See related articles:

'Deceptive' Presidential Commission on Missing Persons an attempt to mislead people - TNA (17 Aug 2014)

TNA remains sceptical over government commission (27 July 2014)

CPA criticises expansion of presidential commission mandate (25 July 2014)

TNA says it has no faith in Presidential commission (19 July 2014)

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