Sri Lanka’s outgoing president Maithripala Sirisena has landed in a controversy after he granted a presidential pardon to Jude Shramantha Jayamaha, who was imprisoned for murdering a 19-year-old girl at Royal Park apartments in 2005.
Jayamaha, who belongs to a wealthy, high-profile family, was initially given 12 years in prison. His subsequent appeal against his jail term was rejected and he was sentenced to death instead, a sentence upheld by the Supreme Court in 2014.
A few weeks ago when the Sri Lankan president received the pardon request, he said: “I am contemplating on this because he has served his term on good behaviour. He went to prison at the age of 19 over an incident of impatience.”
Victim Yvonne Jonsson, a dual national whose mother was Sri Lankan, was beaten to death in the stairwell of the apartment block where her family was living in the capital Colombo in 2005 after an earlier argument with Jayamaha.
The victim’s sister, Caroline Jonsson, said the killer had shown no remorse. During the trial, the court heard that her skull had been fractured into 64 pieces.
Netizens in Sri Lanks took to Twitter to express their outrage over the president’s move.