A Sri Lankan court has sentenced 12 men to death for the mob killing of a lawmaker during the 2022 protests that toppled the country’s president.

COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan court sentenced 12 men to death for the 2022 mob killing of a lawmaker during protests that toppled the president.

Lawmaker Amarakeerthi Athukorala, 57, was lynched after he opened fire on people blocking his car in the town of Nittambuwa, investigators told the court.

Athukorala was overwhelmed by a mob and tried to take refuge in a building. He was surrounded by about 5,000 people, some of whom carried out the lynching alongside his bodyguard.

The killing occurred amid nationwide protests in May 2022 against severe shortages of food, fuel and medicines. The country had run out of foreign exchange to finance essential imports.

In a majority decision, a three-judge bench of the Gampaha High Court convicted the 12 men while freeing another 23 suspects. The verdict can be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Sri Lanka has not carried out capital punishment since 1976, although courts regularly sentence convicts to death by hanging for grave crimes.

During the 2022 protests, some 75 homes of government legislators were torched. This followed loyalists of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa trying to violently break up a peaceful demonstration in Colombo.

The president and his prime minister brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, both resigned. The protests erupted after the government defaulted on its USD 46 billion external debt in April 2022.

Rajapaksa’s successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, negotiated a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund in early 2023. Wickremesinghe lost the September 2024 presidential election to leftist Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

Dissanayake has since stabilised the economy while maintaining the austerity measures of his predecessor.

 The Sun Malaysia