Lanka cops exhume body of slain editor

The new administration has reopened the investigation into Lasantha Wickrematunga’s killing

The Sri Lankan police on Tuesday exhumed the body of a prominent anti- establishment newspaper editor as part of an investigation into his murder, widely blamed on the regime of former strongman President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Lasantha Wickrematunga, a fierce critic of Mr Rajapakse’s government, was killed by unidentified gunmen as he drove to work in Colombo seven years ago.

The new administration has reopened the investigation into his killing, which sparked an international outcry and shone a spotlight on allegations of deadly violence directed against the media.

Mr Wickrematunga, chief

editor of the Sunday Leader newspaper, wrote an article before his death in which he forecast that the Rajapakse government would murder him.

“When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me,” wrote Mr Wickrematunga in the article published in the Guardian and the New Yorker.

On Tuesday police swarmed onto his grave site and erected two white tents after a magistrate ordered a fresh autopsy.