The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,

Referring to the case of Mr. D.M. Dassanayake, Minister of Nation-Building and a member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka, who was assassinated on 8 January 2008, as outlined in the report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CL/182/12(b)-R.1), and to the resolution adopted at its 185th session (October 2009); referring also to the report on the mission carried out by the Committee in February 2008 (CL/183/12(b)-R.2),

Taking into account the police report forwarded by the Parliament of Sri Lanka on 18 March 2010,

Recalling that, according to the informationprovided by the Minister for Disaster Management and Human Rights on the occasion of the 121st Assembly (October 2009), the arrest of a key Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) suspect operating in Colombo had led to the arrest of other suspects, whose revelations resulted in the recovery of the remote control device used to detonate the explosive device triggering the explosion which killed Mr. Dassanayake; that the investigation has since been completed and that the relevant file was to be forwarded to the Attorney General for filing of an indictment and the case was to be called in court on 14 October 2009,

Considering that the police report of March 2010 reiterates this information, adding the name of the three suspects (Malcom Tyrone, Sundara Sathies, W.D. Hyacinth) and stating that the case was to be called on 17 March 2010,

Bearing in mind that since the defeat of the LTTE, President Rajapakse was re-elected in January 2010; that he dissolved parliament on 28 March 2010 and announced elections for 8 April and the convening of the new parliament for 22 April 2010,

1. Thanks the parliamentary authorities and the police for their cooperation;

2. Notes thatthe indictment has not yet been filed; wishes to ascertain the outcome of the court hearing of 17 March 2010 and whether or not the indictment has now been served and, if so, to receive a copy of it;

3. Requests the Secretary General to convey this resolution to the new parliamentary authorities, inviting them to monitor the proceedings in this case; requests him further to convey the resolution to the competent governmental authorities, inviting them to keep it informed of the proceedings;

4. Requests the Committee to continue examining this case and report to it at its next session, to be held on the occasion of the 123rd IPU Assembly (October 2010).

Note: you can download a complete electronic version of the brochure "Results of the 122nd IPU Assembly and related meetings" in PDF format (file size 649K approximately). This version requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can download free of charge.

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