President’s Qatar pictures: CID questions official close to top minister
Criminal Investigation Department (CID) detectives have taken in for questioning an official closely associated with a loquacious minister.
The man had been on President Maithripala Sirisena’s entourage to the UN General Assembly sessions in New York, though not formally in the official list. He had been taken along by the minister concerned.
The move came after President Sirisena was infuriated seeing pictures of him and members of his family, taken at the Hamad International Airport in Qatar’s capital of Doha in a website banned in Sri Lanka. They were all en-route to New York. He had asked the Sri Lanka Ambassador in Qatar, a former school teacher and property businessman, to investigate who took the pictures at the VIP Lounge. President Sirisena had also directed the CID to conduct an investigation.
Government sources said Ambassador A.S.P. Liyanage, a close associate of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and who has his own Labour Party had personally reviewed surveillance video at the airport and identified the official taking photographs from the entrance to the Lounge. The local official had stayed behind in the US after the UNGA sessions and returned to Colombo only this week.
This is whilst another English language website reported with pictures Ambassador Liyanage receiving the sons of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Hamad International Airport. Both Yoshitha and Rohitha had been part of a rugger team that arrived in Doha to play matches. One photograph showed an embassy employee pushing the trolley with the baggage of the Rajapaksa siblings.
CID detectives who were questioning him are trying to ascertain whether the photographs, were still in his possession and how he reportedly transmitted them.
These sources also said that the official in question had previously worked for another judicious minister who was forced to give up his portfolio. He was since re-instated but the official had then been found to have leaked information to the same website. He had since been removed.