Sri Lanka wants to query Swiss Embassy worker over threat

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Sri Lankan authorities have told the Swiss Embassy in Colombo that they want to question an embassy worker who was allegedly forced into a car and threatened to establish the veracity of her claims.

The embassy has said the employee, who allegedly was ordered by her abductors to produce embassy information, is unable to speak with police due to a deteriorating health condition.

The Swiss foreign ministry called the Nov. 25 incident a “very serious and unacceptable attack” and summoned Sri Lanka’s ambassador to demand an investigation.

Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday that evidence collected by investigators did not support the sequence of events of the alleged incident given by the embassy, and that the employee needed to be interviewed by Sri Lankan police.

The kind of information the alleged abductors sought to obtain is not known.

A Sri Lankan police investigator, Nishantha Silva, recently fled to Switzerland following the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as president on Nov. 16.

Silva had been investigating alleged abductions, torture, killings and enforced disappearances of journalists and activists when Rajapaksa was the defence chief under his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency.

As defence chief, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was accused of overseeing what were known as “white van” abduction squads that whisked away critics. Some of them were returned after being tortured, while others were never seen again.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa has denied the allegations.