Major Prabath Bulathwatte was arrested on suspicion he assisted in the abduction and torture of Sri Lankan editor Keith Noyahr in 2008. A lawyer representing Bulathwatte in 2017 said he was being "politically victimized", according to a local media report at the time. Sri Lanka's army commander Mahesh Senanayake said he was reinstating Bulathwatte due to his knowledge of the Eastern Province, home to the Muslim-majority town of Kattankudy where two of the bombers came from, as well as his previous work monitoring Islamist groups. I am trying to restore the peace and normalcy in minimum time," Senanayake said at a news conference on Thursday. The cases hark back to former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's 2005-2015 rule during the end of Sri Lanka's 25-year civil war against mostly Hindu, ethnic Tamil separatists.

Source: Dhaka Tribune May 17, 2019 03:11 UTC