COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's deposed former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa returned to the country on Friday (Sep 2), an airport official said, seven weeks after he fled amid the islan
The 73-year-old leader arrived from Bangkok via Singapore on a commercial flight, ending his 52-day self-imposed exile.
"He has been living in a Thai hotel as a virtual prisoner and was keen to return," a defence official, who asked not to be named, told AFP."The unit comprises elements from the army and police commandos."Sri Lanka's constitution guarantees bodyguards, a vehicle and housing for former presidents, including Gotabaya and his elder brother and fellow ex-president Mahinda.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa's resignation ended his presidential immunity, and rights activists said that they would press for his arrest on multiple charges, including his alleged role in the 2009 assassination of prominent newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge. "We welcome his decision to return so that we can bring him to justice for the crimes he has committed," said Tharindu Jayawardhana, a spokesman for the Sri Lanka Young Journalists' Association.
Rajapaksa also faces charges in a court in the American state of California over Wickrematunge's murder and the torture of Tamil prisoners at the end of the island's traumatic civil war in 2009.
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