Sri Lankan president to review interim report on war missing

Sri Lanka's special presidential commission appointed to investigate over 20,000 cases of people that went missing during the nearly three decades of war is to hand in an interim report to President Maithripala Sirisena this week, the President Media Unit said in a statement on Monday.

Secretary to the Commission, H.W.Gunadasa told reporters that the report has already been finalized and it will be handed to the president on Wednesday.

The commission has recorded statements from witnesses regarding 303 cases of disappearance during the first week of this month. The commission has also received 471 complaints, mostly from the north and eastern regions of the island, he said.

Since the establishment of the commission in August 2013, the commission has so far received 20,106 complaints, including approximately 5,000 complaints from relatives of missing security forces personnel.

Some 16,000 applications were received by the commission initially from the families of people who disappeared during the war. After President Sirisena took office in January, the timeline for the investigations were extended for a third time.

The three-member commission is mandated to inquire into and report on alleged abductions or disappearances during the war from 1990 to 2009.

The commission's work continues as the Sri Lankan government faces a United Nations investigation into allegations of rights abuses including war crimes during the last seven years of the conflict.

The Sri Lankan government has rejected the probe and insisted domestic mechanisms such as the commission on missing persons will adequately pave the way for reconciliation. Endi