The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,

Referring to the case of Mr. Thiyagarajah Maheswaran, a member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka who was assassinated on 1 January 2008, as outlined in the report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CL/188/13(b)-R.1), and to the resolution adopted at its 187th session (October 2010); referring also to the report on the mission to Sri Lanka carried out by the Committee in February 2008 (CL/183/12(b)-R.2),

Taking into account the information which Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, Special Envoy of the President of Sri Lanka for Human Rights, provided to the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians at the hearing held during the 124th IPU Assembly,

Recalling the following information on file:

• Mr. Maheswaran voted against the budget on 14 December 2007 and, soon after the vote, the number of security guards assigned to him was cut from 18 to two; he openly made several statements to the effect that the reduction of his security detail put his life seriously at risk and made repeated requests to the Government to enhance his security, but to no avail; on 1 January 2008, while attending a religious ceremony in a Hindu temple in Colombo, he was shot and later died in a Colombo hospital; the attack came after he had stated in a television interview that, upon the resumption of parliamentary sittings on 8 January 2008, he would describe in detail the terror campaign that the Government was pursuing in Jaffna, particularly how abductions and killings were managed;

• The authorities arrested Johnson Collin Valentino alias “Wasantha” from Jaffna, who had been identified as the gunman on the basis of a DNA analysis; the investigators concluded that the assailant was a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) activist who had been trained and sent to Colombo to kill Mr. Maheswaran; he confessed to the crime and his parents too confirmed that he was a LTTE member; according to the police progress report forwarded in August 2008, the Attorney General filed an indictment and the case was to be called on 19 August 2008; according to the police report of October 2009, the case was to be called on 16 October 2009 for the purpose of serving the indictment and listing the case for hearing,

1. Thanks the authorities and, in particular, Minister Samarasinghe for the consistent cooperation extended to the Committee and for the information provided;

2. Notes thatthe trial is proceeding and wishes to ascertain whether Mr. Valentino's confession and the other evidence gathered have helped to shed light on the identity of the instigators and the motives of the crime;

3. Requests the Secretary General to seek this information from the 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 125th IPU Assembly (October 2011).

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