Hundreds of prisoners joined protests in Colombo and other prisons

Speaking to the media after his court appearance on Wednesday, Former Commander of the Sri Lanka army, Sarath Fonseka blamed the government of incompetence and laziness.

“I sympathise with the protesting prisoners. Their grievances are justified. The government is too lazy and incompetent to find solutions.” Former general told the journalists after the days hearing of ‘White flag case”.

Speaking to BBC Sinhala Service, Commissioner General of prisons said that prisoners had no right to protest and the authorities are not ready to compromise.

White flag

In his statement as the main accused, Sarath Fonseka said that he was prevented from retracting the published statement attributed to him by the editor of Sunday Leader.

According to the statement given by him, the editor, Frederica Janz and the publisher of the paper had pleaded with him to not to retract the statement.

The editor had told the accused that she would be arrested in a situation where the statement was withdrawn.

Support for presidential campaign

He said that he agreed to go along with the request as Sunday Leader had agreed to support him during the presidential election campaign.

Sarath Fonseka also denied the claims that he was interviewed by the Leader editor. He admitted that there was a friendly conversation with the editor but he was misquoted afterwards.

No one was shot

According to the statement of the accused, the editor was not taking any notes of the conversation between them.

Sarath Fonseka also said that there were no incidents of Tamil Tiger leaders coming to surrender with white flags, or shooting down any of the surrendered leaders by security forces.