Major General Priyanka Fernando, the former Minister Counsellor (Defence) at the Sri Lanka High Commission in London who was convicted in a case filed by pro-LTTE protesters in 2018 was acquitted by the UK High Court on Friday.
“The High Court rejecting the arguments by the defendants, upheld the traditional views on diplomatic immunity, as contained in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961,” Sri Lanka’s High Commission in London said in a statement. Sri Lanka and the UK are State Parties to the Convention. The Westminster Magistrate’s Court earlier concluded that Brigadier Fernando was not entitled to diplomatic immunity because the acts complained of did not form part of his “job description”. Shortly after the Magistrate’s Court ruling former Foreign Secretary Ravinatha Ariyasinghe met the then British High Commissioner in Colombo James Dauris and conveyed that this incident will set a bad precedent on diplomacy. The UK High Court allowed the appeal by Major General Fernando against the judgement of the Westminster Magistrate’s Court which was delivered in December 2019.
Following the ruling, the Court ordered the defendants, the pro-LTTE demonstrators who staged protests in front of the Sri Lanka High Commission in London on Sri Lanka’s 70th Independence Day on February 4, 2018, to pay costs to Major General Fernando. The pro LTTE Diaspora groups in the UK made a huge outcry for action against Major General Fernando.