Ahmer Bilal Soofi (left) and Avdhash Kaushal.
Indian activist and Pakistani law expert join Sri Lanka panel
August 19, 2014 12:37 pm
President Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed two more members — India’s Avdhash Kaushal and Pakistan’s Ahmer B. Soofi — to the advisory panel of the Missing persons Commission, a spokesman said.
Ahmer Bilal Soofi is former caretaker federal law minister in Pakistan and an international law expert.
Avdhash Kaushal is an Indian activist from the Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK), a Dehradun-based NGO.
Last week, Kaushal had confirmed that he received a call from President Rajapaksa’s office in this connection. “The President himself spoke to me, inviting me to be on this panel. I asked for the terms and I was too happy to be part of it,” he told The Hindu.
President Rajapaksa, according to him, visited the organisation in Dehradun on his invitation. “Over 20 Sri Lankans pursued a course in Human Rights offered by us.”
Earlier this month, President Rajapaksa informed media heads that he has decided to expand to six the three-member International Advisory Panel to the Presidential Commission to investigate cases of alleged disappearances of persons in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
British lawyers Desmond de Silva and Geoffrey Nice and U.S. law professor David Crane were roped in to be part of the advisory panel, which was appointed by the president on July 17.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa later expanded the mandate of the Commission — originally set up to look into complaints of enforced disappearances — directing it to probe the roles of Sri Lankan army and the rebel Tigers during the civil war.
