AHRC, June 8, 2012 - The former Attorney General, Mohan Peiris, last November told the United Nations CAT Committee that he knew personally, through a reliable source that Prageeth Eknaligoda was living in a foreign country. However, last week when giving evidence before the Homagama Magistrate's Court he said that he does not know whether Prageeth Eknaligoda was dead or alive.

By Bob Dietz/CPJ Asia Program Coordinator, 02 June 2012 - Former Attorney General Mohan Peiris has been ordered to testify about a statement he made at the U.N. Committee Against Torture in Geneva on November 9, 2011, in which he said that Prageeth Eknelygoda was alive and living outside the country (see "Sri Lanka's savage smokescreen"). Peiris will have to appear at the Homogama Magistrate's Court in Colombo on June 5, next Tuesday, which has been hearing the case brought by Eknelygoda's wife, Sandhya, to learn more about his disappearance on January 24, 2010.

AHRC, 18 May 2012 - The former Attorney General, Mohan Peiris, has been ordered to appear before the Homagama Magistrate's Court and to reveal what he knows about the whereabouts of Prageeth Eknalilgoda, the journalist who has been missing since January 24, 2010. At the official session of the United Nations Committee against Torture, held last November, the former Attorney General representing Sri Lanka as a state party told the Committee that he had learned that Prageeth Eknalilgoda is living in a foreign country. Prageeth Eknalilgoda's wife, Sandaya Eknaligoda, through her lawyers made a request to the Magistrate's Court inquiring into the circumstances of the disappearance of her husband, to summon the former Attorney General and to request him to divulge the information he has on the whereabouts of her husband. The state represented by a solicitor general objected to this request. Yesterday, May 17, the court made order allowing her request.

Lanka News Web, 15 November 2011 - Underworld leader Dematagoda Chaminda has told the CID recently that a group of persons led by him had dumped the body of journalist Prageeth Eknaligoda in the sea off the Negombo lagoon. Demtagoda Chaminda was arrested on suspicion over the murder of Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra and four others and is currently in the custody of the CID. He is a trusted lackey of parliamentarian Kudu Duminda. Chaminda had said that he was not aware of whose body he had dumped in the sea until that evening when the boss (Duminda) had said it was a web journalist during a party at Jaic Hilton and that he had later found out that the dead person was Prageeth Eknaligoda. He had added that on every occasion when the bodies were dumped, the boss had told him that they were orders by the big boss (Defence Secretary). “Sir, these people are going to kill me anyway. It is true that we have killed and transported drugs, but none of these were done for personal reasons. They were done because boss asked us to do so. Please sir, go out and reveal these details. These details will be buried forever if they kill me in a few days,” Dematagoda Chaminda has told the police officers.

By Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia Program Coordinator, 16 November 2011 - Sri Lanka's former attorney general Mohan Peiris, who is now the senior legal adviser to the cabinet and who many Sri Lankans say is aiming to become the next Supreme Court Chief Justice, has made conflicting statements about missing journalist Prageeth Eknelygoda. The discrepancies do more than point up the government's indifference to Eknelygoda's fate and the mental anguish of his wife and two sons. Peiris's statements highlight the disregard with which the government views international opinion.

Pen, 11 05 2011 - Sri Lankan journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda will have been missing for 500 days. Prageeth was abducted on 24 January 2010 and has not been heard from since. As yet, no thorough and credible investigation into Prageeth's case has been made. His wife Sandhya has received almost no response to her repeated requests for information about her husband's fate, including her incredibly moving letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.