{"id":87065,"date":"2019-04-08T17:12:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T00:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=87065"},"modified":"2019-04-08T17:12:18","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T00:12:18","slug":"sri-lankan-presidential-hopeful-sued-in-federal-court-for-human-rights-violations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/04\/08\/sri-lankan-presidential-hopeful-sued-in-federal-court-for-human-rights-violations\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan Presidential Hopeful Sued in Federal Court for Human Rights Violations"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Beth Van Schaack<\/a> Courtesy\u00a0 justsecurity.org<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Human rights lawyers have sued Sri Lankan presidential hopeful Gotabaya Rajapaksa in federal court in the Central District of California. Rajapaksa, who is a joint Sri Lankan-U.S. citizen, was served with process in the parking lot of a Trader Joes, of all places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plaintiff Roy Samthanam, who is a Canadian citizen, alleges that he was detained and tortured from 2007-2010 by the Terrorism Investigation Division of the Sri Lanka police. He tells his harrowing story of physical and mental torture here<\/a>. He is represented by the International Truth & Justice Project<\/a>, under the leadership of the indomitable Yasmin Sooka<\/a>, and a private law firm<\/a>. The U.N. Human Rights Committee, which evaluates states\u2019 compliance with the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, has already ordered Sri Lanka to pay him compensation<\/a>. A separate case was apparently filed on behalf of the family of assassinated<\/a> journalist Lasantha Wickrematunga<\/a>. Rajapaksa is known to own property in California, which could be attached for the purpose of any civil judgment against him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just Security has extensively covered the aftermath of the war in Sri Lanka<\/a>, which is characterized by an entrenched impunity<\/a>. In particular, we have offered a number of proposals for how the Department of Justice could prosecute Rajapaksa under the U.S. War Crimes Act<\/a>, which has never been activated to date. That statute grants jurisdiction over war crimes committed by, or against, U.S. citizens<\/a>. (See Ryan Goodman\u2019s coverage here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been some discussion that Rajapaksa has given up<\/a> his U.S. citizenship in order to run for higher office<\/a> in Sri Lanka. This does not affect the viability of these civil cases because he was served with process while in the United States, and was\u2014in any case\u2014a U.S. citizen at the time he allegedly acted. The Torture Victim Protection Act (28 U.S.C. \u00a7 1350 note<\/a>) is expressly extraterritorial, so does not raise the extraterritorial issues<\/a> presented by the Alien Tort Claims Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Beth Van Schaack Courtesy\u00a0 justsecurity.org Human rights lawyers have sued Sri Lankan presidential hopeful Gotabaya Rajapaksa in federal court in the Central District of California. Rajapaksa, who is a joint Sri Lankan-U.S. citizen, was served with process in the parking lot of a Trader Joes, of all places. Plaintiff Roy Samthanam, who is a Canadian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}