47 police officers questioned over assassination plot
October 26, 2018 04:21 pm
The Criminal Investigations Department has recorded statements from 47 police officers including two Deputy Inspector Generals (DIGs) over the alleged assassination plot targeting the President and the former Defence Secretary.
Police Media Spokesman SP Ruwan Gunasekara revealed this while speaking at a press conference in Colombo today, to brief the media on the arrest of former DIG of the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) Nalaka de Silva.
He said that the CID has recorded statements from a total 89 persons in connection with their investigation and that this includes 47 policemen.
Former DIG Nalaka de Silva was arrested by the CID on Thursday over a suspected plot to assassinate President Maithripala Sirisena and former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. He was remanded until November 7 after being produced at court.
He was arrested after a police informant, Namal Kumara, made the allegations against Silva in a news conference.
Gunasekara stated that the investigation was not solely based on the audio recordings and that in addition to the recordings the assistance of experts was also obtained for the investigation.
He said that the CID had initially received 6 audio recordings of the phone conversations and that as per the court’s orders, they were sent to the Government Analyst’s Department for tests.
The department’s report stated that the tapes were separates into 124 recordings based on conversations and also verified that 123 of them were a match to the voice samples obtained from both Namal Kumara and Nalak de Silva.
The police spokesman also said that the CID recorded statements from the former DIG for a total of 48 hours and 20 minutes within 5 days.
Meanwhile he mentioned that the complaint filed Namal Kumara with the CID claims that the plot is to assassinate the president or former defence secretary and an ASP.
Although the complaint states that the audio recordings do not point to such a situation, SP Ruwan Gunasekara said, however, adding that further investigations are ongoing.
