Colombo: Sri Lankan Supreme Court on Thursday reversed former president Maithripala Sirisena's decision to grant a presidential pardon to a murder convict and ordered him to pay compensation to the victims in the case.
The three-member bench said his 2019 decision to grant a pardon to convict Shramantha Jayamaha was unconstitutional.
Jayamaha in 2005 beat to death Yvonne Jonsson, a 19-year-old Swedish woman holidaying in Sri Lanka, at a high-rise apartment here.
The court was told that her skull was fractured into 64 pieces. Jayamaha was earlier imprisoned for 12 years but he later appealed to the higher court which rejected his plea and sentenced him to death. This was again reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 2014.
Sirisena had in 2019 granted him pardon a few days before resigning from the post of president ahead of the presidential election. The court ordered Sirisena to pay SLRs 1 million each to the petitioner who filed the case and the parents of the victim.
