Rohitha Bogollagama on his way to the Colombo High Court
Rohitha Bogollagama, Sri Lanka's foreign minister during the Mullivaikkal genocide, has been remanded until the end of his corruption trial after the Bribery Commission arrested him on an open warrant.
Officers of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption arrested Bogollagama on Wednesday on an open warrant issued by the Colombo High Court , after he repeatedly failed to appear in a case the commission had filed against him. High Court Judge Rashantha Godawela ordered that he be remanded until the conclusion of the trial.
The case, filed in 2015, accuses Bogollagama of directing the chairman of the Board of Investment, while he was investment promotion minister in 2006, to approve about 1.5 million rupees beyond the amount authorised by the Treasury for an investment promotion event in London. Proceedings had continued in his absence.
His arrest came on the same day the commission arrested Shiranthi Rajapaksa , the wife of the former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, over funds given to her charity.
Bogollagama was later appointed Sri Lanka's high commissioner to the United Kingdom. In 2024, the Sri Lankan government launched an investigation into him over allegations of financial misconduct in London. The foreign minister Vijitha Herath confirmed the inquiry, but denied claims that the government had bought him a car. Sri Lankan media also reported, without confirmation, that British police had visited his official residence over claims that a domestic worker there was being harassed.
As high commissioner, he complained to the Home Office about a Tamil protest at a cricket match in England, reportedly calling a flag carried by demonstrators an "emblem of the LTTE".
File photograph: Rohitha Bogollagama as Sri Lankan foreign minister
Bogollagama served as foreign minister under Mahinda Rajapaksa from 2007 to 2010, spending much of his term denying mounting evidence that Sri Lankan forces were systematically committing war crimes against Tamils.
"Within the no-fire zone we never returned fire because we would never have taken that degree of chance for inflicting harm on civilians," he told The Times in June 2009, after the newspaper reported that more than 20,000 Tamil civilians had been killed in the zone.
On 18 May 2009, as the Sri Lankan military's final offensive drew to a close, the US ambassador urged Bogollagama and the defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa to accept a mediated surrender and show maximum restraint to avoid further civilian casualties. In January 2010, Bogollagama rejected a call by the UN special rapporteur Philip Alston for an international inquiry, after video footage emerged of Sri Lankan troops executing blindfolded Tamils.
Tens of thousands of Tamils were killed in the final months of the Mullivaikkal genocide. Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa are accused of war crimes and genocide.
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