Switzerland claims embassy worker was abducted by Sri Lankan security officers

Switzerland has filed a formal complaint after an employee of the Swiss embassy in Sri Lanka was allegedly abducted by men who forced her to divulge sensitive information about the embassy and its activities. The Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that the embassy employee was kidnapped by four men while walking in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, on November 25. The men took her to what appeared to be a safe house and interrogated her for several hours.

The men eventually forced the Swiss embassy employee, who is a Sri Lankan national, to unlock her personal cell phone. According to Swiss government officials, they appeared to be looking for information about a senior Sri Lankan police detective who recently fled to Switzerland with his family and was granted political asylum. Some Sri Lankan media identified the man as Nishantha Silva, a police detective who until recently headed the Sri Lankan Criminal Intelligence Division’s Organized Crime Investigation Unit.

Silva is one of hundreds of members of Sri Lanka’s public sector who have fled abroad following the election of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa last month. The Rajapaksa family is one of the most powerful in the country, and has a long history of influencing Sri Lankan politics. Hours after assuming power, the ultra-nationalist Rajapaksa pledged to “hunt down” the leadership of the police and security services who investigated his family after 2015, when the Rajapaksas were ousted from the government. Hundreds of police and security officers have since been arrested or summarily fired.

On Tuesday, a Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman told The New York Times that the Swiss government had verified the details of the abduction of its embassy worker. The spokesman added that the employee was forced to disclose “embassy-related information” after she was “threatened at length” by the men. The latter released her after warning her that she would be killed if she spoke to anyone about her ordeal.

On Monday, a spokesman for President Rajapaksa told reporters in Colombo that the Sri Lankan government questioned the accuracy of the Swiss embassy worker’s account of her abduction. Later, however, the Sri Lankan government announced that it had launched an investigation into the allegations. It now appears that the Sri Lankan government is preventing the embassy worker from leaving the country while the investigation into her claims is underway.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 04 December 2019 | Permalink