The Sri Lankan army’s Jaffna district commander has been promoted to army chief of staff.
Major General Senarath Bandara assumed his new duties on Tuesday, following a five-month stint as commander in Jaffna, during which time he continued with the programme of militarisation of the North.
As well as having been commander of the East, Bandara was also heavily involved in Sri Lankan army operations throughout the war and in the final stages in which tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were massacred.
He was reportedly commander of the 572 Brigade during the peak of the genocide. In 2015, four soldiers of that brigade were sentenced over the gang-rape of a Tamil woman in 2010, only to be acquitted by the Court of Appeal in 2019.
