Five high-profile underworld figures who were arrested in Indonesia and repatriated to Sri Lanka last night, are being held and interrogated under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), police confirmed today.
The use of the PTA to detain the suspects comes just days after Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told Parliament that the law would be repealed by September. “Within a short period of assuming power, we appointed a committee to study and make recommendations on the PTA. The committee has convened on multiple occasions and has started making relevant amendments to the PTA,” he said last week.
The suspects are detained under 72-hour detention orders issued by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Western Province North Crimes Division. The group of five men, described as organised criminals, were arrested in Indonesia on 27 August and brought back to Colombo on 30 August. At the airport, they were formally handed over in the presence of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananda Wijepala and Inspector General of Police Priyantha Weerasooriya, who acknowledged the joint efforts of Indonesian and Sri Lankan officers in the operation.
The detention under the draconian and controversial law comes despite Herath stressing that amendments would be finalised by the end of August, with a Gazette notification on abolishing the law expected in September. “The PTA will be abolished next month, while a new legislation will be introduced to ensure national security, pending a final committee report,” he added.
Earlier this month, the minister had reiterated in Parliament that the draft bill to repeal the controversial law would be published in the Government Gazette in early September. “We will make the necessary amendments and finalise them before the end of this month, after which the gazette notification to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act will be published in early September,” he said.
Acknowledging long-standing criticism, Herath insisted, “We accept that the PTA is a law that must be changed. Therefore, we are in the process of repealing it. There is no debate about that.” He added that the act was currently being applied to a limited extent and “is not being used to target any ethnic or religious communities. The majority of those arrested under the PTA are not Tamils or Muslims, but Sinhalese individuals involved in drug-related and underworld crimes.”
The PTA, introduced in 1979 as a “temporary” measure, has long been condemned by human rights organisations and Tamils for enabling arbitrary detention, torture, and the silencing of dissent. It was a key instrument used by Sri Lanka to detain thousands of Tamils without charge, with some held for decades.
Despite repeated promises of reform or repeal, successive governments have continued to rely on the legislation. International human rights bodies, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have repeatedly called for the law’s full abolition, stressing that cosmetic amendments fail to meet international standards.
