Former army staff sergeant released

Former army staff sergeant R.M. Sunil Ratnayake who was convicted and sentenced to death for the Mirusuvil murder case in 2000 has been released from Welikada Prison after he received Presidential Clemency.

R.M. Sunil Ratnayake, a staff sergeant attached to Sri Lanka Army was sentenced to death by Colombo High Court Trial-at-Bar bench on June 25, 2015 after found guilty for murdering eight civilians at Mirusuvil in Jaffna on December 19, 2000.

On November 27, 2002, the Attorney General indicted five accused on 19 charges in the murder of eight civilians in Mirusuvil of the Jaffna peninsula before a High Court at Trial-at-Bar in Colombo. The Trial-at-bar bench found former Staff Sergeant R.M. Sunil Ratnayake guilty for multiple counts including the murder.

Meanwhile, on May 20, 2017, Supreme Court five-judge-bench had also unanimously affirmed the conviction and the death sentence imposed on former army staff sergeant regarding this incident.

Mirusavil, a northern Sri Lankan village in the Jaffna peninsula had faced the ferocity of the war that had engulfed the country, at the dawn of the millennium. In the early part of the year 2000, the fighting has intensified and in April 2000, the combatants of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had overrun one of the key and strategic Army bases at Elephant Pass.



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