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COLOMBO — The arrest on Friday of Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda on corruption allegations, followed by his release on bail later the same day, has renewed questions among many Sri Lankan Tamils, human rights advocates and families of the disappeared, not over the decision to arrest him in the corruption case, but over why he has never been taken into custody in connection with the long-running investigation into the disappearance of eleven civilians during the final stages of Sri Lan

VAVUNIYA, Sri Lanka — A Sri Lankan court has temporarily blocked the Northern Province governor from enforcing his decision to remove the elected mayor of Vavuniya, setting off a broader constitutional dispute over the powers of unelected governors in the absence of provincial councils. The Vavuniya High Court on Friday granted interim relief suspending a Gazette notification issued by Northern Province Governor Nagalingam Vethanayahan, removing Vavuniya Municipal Council Mayor Sundaralingam Ka

COLOMBO — Addressing several hundred guests on the floodlit grounds of the United States Embassy on Thursday evening, the senior American diplomat in Sri Lanka framed the 250th anniversary of American independence not around treaties or trade, but around the movies. "Tonight, we celebrate 250 years of American independence by honoring one of our nation's greatest gifts to the world — the art of cinema," said Jayne Howell, the chargé d'affaires who has run the embassy since January. For more th

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s anti-corruption commission arrested a former navy commander, Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda, on Friday over the 2006 recruitment of a son of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa into the navy and his subsequent officer training in Britain at state expense, deepening an inquiry into how the country’s most powerful political family bent state institutions to its purposes. The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption, known as CIABOC,

A prominent exiled Muslim woman writer has renewed calls for Sri Lankan authorities to explain why a man who arranged covert medical treatment for the brother of the 2019 Easter Sunday bombing mastermind was released without ever being brought to trial. In a Facebook post this week, Sharmila Seyyid, a novelist and activist who has lived in the United States since 2021 after years of threats from Islamist extremists in Sri Lanka, said she had filed two formal complaints — with the Criminal Inves