COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan court on Saturday acquitted five men, including three navy intelligence officers, charged with assassinating an opposition Tamil legislator whose party immediately raised concerns about judicial integrity.

Nadaraja Raviraj, who represented the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), was shot dead in 2006 along with his bodyguard as they drove out of his home in Colombo, two and a half years before the end of the country’s Tamil separatist war.

Raviraj had been a staunch critic of then-president Mahinda Rajapakse’s no-holds-barred offensive that crushed Tamil rebels and prompted allegations that up to 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed by troops.

The court heard testimony that a navy intelligence unit, which operated near Rajapakse’s official residence, had carried out the assassination.

Published in Dawn December 25th, 2016