COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s public security minister told Parliament that the Criminal Investigation Department is investigating a complaint over the killing of 186 Tamil villagers outside Batticaloa in 1990, but he gave no indication that investigators had questioned the army officer the complaint accuses. The minister, Ananda Wijepala, was replying to questions submitted on Aug. 6 by Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, a Tamil member of Parliament from Batticaloa, under Standing Order 27(2), which

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department questioned the mayor of Jaffna for about two hours on Wednesday over the installation of a statue in Nallur honoring Thileepan, a political leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who died on a hunger strike in 1987. Four C.I.D. officers went to the Jaffna Municipal Council office and recorded a statement from the mayor, V. Mathivathani, on how permission for the statue had been granted. She was asked whether she h

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s Court of Appeal on Tuesday took up a long-running dispute over grazing land in the country’s east, after the petitioner’s side asked it to reopen the case on the grounds that an earlier ruling had not been carried out. The case was filed by Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, a member of Parliament from Batticaloa District. It concerns the Mayilathamadu and Madhavanai pastures, which Tamil cattle and dairy farmers say they have used for generations. M.A. Sumanthiran, a Pre

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 21 — Douglas Devananda, the former Sri Lankan cabinet minister and leader of the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), has thanked President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's government for searching his party's offices, saying the operations would help clear its name of longstanding allegations. Officers of the Criminal Investigation Department, acting on a court warrant, first searched the EPDP’s office at 273 Stanley Road in Jaffna before proceeding to its office in Kayts