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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ramarajan" data-source="post: 1603383" data-attributes="member: 86701">Trial ProceduresIn criminal cases, juries try defendants in public. Defendants are informed of the charges and evidence against them, and they have the right to counsel and the right to appeal. The government provides counsel for indigent persons tried on criminal charges in the High Court and the Courts of Appeal, but it does not provide counsel in other cases. Private legal aid organizations assisted some defendants. The legal aid commission offered legal aid to assist those who could not afford representation; however, some sources reported that its representatives extorted money from beneficiaries. Juries are not used in cases brought under the PTA. Defendants are presumed innocent, and confessions obtained by various coercive means, including torture, are inadmissible in all criminal proceedings except PTA cases. Defendants bear the burden of proof to show that their confessions were obtained by coercion. Defendants in PTA cases have the right to appeal. Subject to judicial review in certain cases, defendants may spend up to 18 months in prison on administrative order waiting for their cases to be heard. Once their cases came to trial, decisions were made relatively quickly.Despite the law calling for court proceedings and other legislation to be available in English, Sinhala, and Tamil, most court proceedings outside of Jaffna and the northern parts of the country were conducted in English or Sinhala, which, due to a shortage of court‑appointed interpreters, restricted the ability of Tamil‑speaking defendants to recieve a fair hearing. Trials and hearings in the north were in Tamil and English. While Tamil‑speaking judges existed at the magistrate level, only four High Court judges, one Appeals Court judge, and one Supreme Court justice spoke fluent Tamil. Few legal textbooks existed in Tamil, and the government did not comply with legislation requiring that all laws be published in English, Sinhala, and Tamil.During the year the LTTE continued to operate its own court system composed of judges with little or no legal training. LTTE courts operated without codified or defined legal authority and essentially as agents of the LTTE rather than as an independent judiciary. Political Prisoners and DetaineesOn March 17, officials arrested former deputy minister and outspoken government critic Sripathi Sooriyarachchi on charges stemming from the use of his government vehicle for two weeks after being dismissed from his ministerial post in February. However, government critics alleged that the government arrested Sooriyarachchi because of his public allegations that President Rajapaksa bribed the LTTE to suppress Tamil votes in the 2005 presidential election. Police held Sooriyarachchi for several weeks before releasing him; thereafter, he resumed his position in parliament as a member of the opposition. However, the charges against Sooriyarachchi remained pending.On May 30, the Terrorism Investigation Division arrested Tiran Alles, a prominent Sinhalese businessman and a long‑time supporter of President Rajapaksa. The government charged that Alles supported the LTTE by providing large sums of money to them during the 2005 presidential campaign. Alles' friends, Sooriyarachchi and former Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, alleged that Alles' arrest was politically motivated and intended to keep him from revealing the role of President Rajapaksa's brother Basil in the election bribery scandal. Authorities released Alles after approximately one month. Charges against him remained pending at year's end.The LTTE reportedly held political prisoners, although the number was impossible to determine because of the secretive nature of the organization; the LTTE refused to allow the ICRC access to these prisoners.f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, orCorrespondenceThe law provides for the right to privacy, and the government generally respected this provision, although it infringed on citizens' privacy rights in some areas. In Colombo, police evicted mostly Tamil residents, while conducting cordon and search operations, particularly in poor Tamil communities and of lodges housing Tamils visiting from other parts of the island. The government evicted at least 376 Tamils from their homes in Colombo, according to Human Rights Watch. On July 8, following international reporting, the Supreme Court ordered the government to cease preventing Tamils from entering or staying in Colombo.In Jaffna, the progovernment paramilitary EPDP used a network of informants to discover suspected LTTE sympathizers or operatives. Credible reports indicate that EPDP worked with military intelligence and other government security forces to identify, abduct, and kill the alleged sympathizers. The Karuna group used a similar network of informants in the east to discover and eliminate possible LTTE operatives or sympathizers.The LTTE and the Karuna group continued to interfere with the work of international NGOs. Credible sources reported 35 cases of harassment of international NGOs by the Karuna group in the Batticaloa and Ampara districts of the east. Credible reports indicated that between June and November there were six incidents of attempted forced recruitment of local NGO staff in the LTTE-controlled Vanni area. Local, mainly Tamil staff of UN agencies also faced increased harassment by the security forces and paramilitaries, to the point that many had difficulty carrying out their work.The LTTE routinely interfered with the privacy of citizens by maintaining an effective network of informants.</blockquote>

Verification: Haya warak paha keeyada? (haya wadi kireema paha)

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