COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Monday that his government would send a formal written appeal to the king of Saudi Arabia asking him to pardon a Sri Lankan Tamil worker who was sentenced to death in the kingdom over a Facebook post that Saudi authorities deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.
The worker, Sivarasa Anojan, a Tamil from eastern Sri Lanka, was initially sentenced to five years in prison and fined 3 million Saudi riyals, about $800,000. His family, with assistance from the Sri Lankan government, appealed the verdict. The family was later informed that the appeal had resulted in a death sentence.
Mr. Dissanayake announced the plan after meeting Mr. Anojan's parents at the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo, according to a statement on his official Facebook page.
"I explained that the Government is making every possible effort to secure a pardon for Mr. Sivarasa Anojan and is intervening through both legal and diplomatic channels," the president said in the statement. "In particular, I stated that steps would be taken to make a formal written diplomatic appeal to the King of Saudi Arabia seeking a pardon for him."
The president said the parents had been briefed on steps the Foreign Ministry had already taken, including filing appeals, and that the government was closely following the case.
The meeting capped a day of lobbying in the capital by Mr. Anojan's relatives and supporters. Rajkumar Rajeevkanth, a social activist who has been assisting the family, said more than 40 relatives and residents of Mr. Anojan's home area had traveled to Colombo for a series of meetings he helped arrange.
The group first met with the opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa, at his office. During the meeting, Mr. Premadasa telephoned the Saudi ambassador to Sri Lanka to discuss the case and spoke directly with Mr. Anojan, who is imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Premadasa also called the secretary of the Foreign Ministry to ask about the government's efforts and pledged his support for securing Mr. Anojan's release.
The group then went to the Saudi Embassy to deliver a letter, but the handover was postponed, Mr. Rajeevkanth said. While they were at the embassy, the family received an invitation to meet the president.
"At around 1 p.m., the family members and I met the president and spoke with him," Mr. Rajeevkanth wrote on Facebook. He said Mr. Dissanayake had assured them of the government's "full support and cooperation."
Mr. Anojan is from Natpiddimunai, near Kalmunai in Ampara District, and had been working in Saudi Arabia when he was prosecuted.
His family pursued the appeal despite legal advice obtained through Sri Lankan diplomatic channels warning that its chances of success were “extremely low.” The sequence has raised questions about the handling of the case by Sri Lanka’s Foreign Service: the appeal went forward despite that assessment, and the proceedings ultimately resulted in a death sentence. Until then, the Foreign Ministry had maintained that it had received no official notification of a death sentence and that its information about the outcome had come from a lawyer who was present in court. On Sunday, however, activist Rajkumar Rajeevkanth, who has been assisting Anojan’s family, said the Sri Lankan ambassador to Saudi Arabia had confirmed to him that the embassy received the document formally confirming the death sentence on Saturday.
