Ln: Why did you leave the Commission of Inquiry?
DN: Counsel for the Army and the STF attacked and threatened me constantly, demanding that I quit. This did not bother me unduly. However, two developments disturbed me. The two counsel began to threaten the other commissioners with individual prosecutions to recover the cost of the entire sum of the order (Rs 100,000,000) spent on the commission after getting the commission proceedings invalidated on account of my participation. Two of the commissioners thought that I should at least temporarily withdraw from commission sittings. The other negative factor was a letter from the secretary to the president which suggested that the president took the allegations of conflict of interest seriously, wanted my explanation, and in the meantime, wanted me to withdraw from the commission sittings. It was these two developments, especially the latter, that led me to quit. Remaining in the commission and not attending the current sittings (relating to the killings of the seventeen ACEF aid workers in Muttur and the five youth in Trincomalee) would have been possible but totally unacceptable to me.

Ln: Politics aside, was it not a conflict of interest for you to be a member of the CoI given your very close association with CPA?
DN: There was never any conflict of interest. I was never a full-timer at CPA, but a part-time consultant, peripheral to its organisational structure. Even before I was appointed as a member of the commission, the major project on which I was a consultant to the CPA had ended, and I was on short, ad hoc assignments. Within a few months, even these stopped so as to permit me to function full-time on the commission. By the time that the civil society consortium, including CPA, came into the commission proceedings, I was not working for the CPA, but merely using it as my mailing address.

Ln: Does your resignation prove that you are ‘guilty as charged’?
DN: No. I have made this clear in my letter of resignation and in several public communications on the subject.

Ln: Did you deliberately stay on in the commission despite your close ties with the CPA and did you resign only after you were ‘forced to’?
DN: No. I disregarded the charges of a conflict of interest because I saw them as baseless. No one had the authority to force me to quit. I quit only for the reasons set out in response to the first question.

Ln: As you know, there is little confidence that the commission will produce results - find the real culprits behind the crimes committed. Do you think this is a fair judgment?
DN: I should not prejudge, but the cancellation of the programmed video-conferencing on the directions of the presidential secretariat was a major setback. There were very good prospects of reaching satisfactory conclusions in the ACF aid workers case, the Trincomalee youth case, and, perhaps, in a few other cases, but these were sharply diminished as a result of that directive. Hopefully, there will be satisfactory conclusions in at least the two cases referred to.

Ln: How would you assess the work of the commission (in terms of speed, efficiency, impartiality, effectiveness, ability to perform the task assigned, etc)?
DN: As many as eight members in a commission is not conducive to speed, efficiency, and effectiveness. Moreover, public inquiries (as against closed-door investigations) could begin only in January this year, with the amendment to the Act expressly permitting the commission to sit, provided at least one half of the commission, inclusive of the chairman, were present. The inquiry process was initially slow-moving, but accelerated dramatically with the introduction of video-conferencing. This was because key witnesses are mostly frightened to give truthful evidence unless they are safely overseas, in which case they can be satisfactorily accessed only through video-conferencing. The cancelled video-conferencing program promised to be even more critically important than the earlier video-conferencing program.

Ln: Do you think the IIGEP helped the commission or did they hamper it?
DN: The IIGEP helped to secure the statements of several important witnesses. The help of the IIGEP in respect of video-conferencing was indispensable.

Ln: There was bad blood between the IIGEP and the commission when the former left. What happened to the relationship?
DN: When one group (the commissioners) is assigned to inquire, and another (IIGEP) to observe the former, some misunderstandings are to be expected. Cooperation in video-conferencing helped to reduce the rift.

Ln: Is the president/government interfering with the proceedings of the commission?
DN: Item-by-item control of expenditure by the presidential secretariat hindered progress. Allowing the first video-conferencing program was very helpful; disallowing the second was a disaster.

Ln: Gomin Dayasiri and S L Gunasekera wrote scathing and personal articles about you. Why haven’t you responded, particularly to their allegations of conflict of interest?
DN: I needed to maintain my dignity as a commissioner. It would be unseemly for individual commissioners to get into arguments in public, especially with lawyers appearing before them. In any case, the tone and content of the articles of the two counsels did not merit reply.

Ln: Do you think your resignation followed by that of Javid Yusuf in any way serves to cripple the work of the CoI?
DN: If the working of the commission is crippled, it is not because of the resignations, but because of the factors that led to them.
Ln: Justice Udalagama has said that the two resignations will not affect the CoI and that a report is due in September. Do you have confidence in this?
DN: I am not in a position to assess the progress being made now.

Ln: What do you feel about the funding constraints faced by the CoI and how serious are they in terms of how the affect the proceedings?
DN: The problem is less with the quantum of the funds voted and more with the controls exercised by the Presidential Secretariat on the use of those funds.

Ln: What do you think about the manner in which the video-conferencing issue was handled or interfered with?
DN: The decision to disallow the video-conferencing was taken by the presidential secretariat without consulting the commission. The effect was crippling.

Ln: How vital was video-conferencing to the proceedings of the commission?
DN: Absolutely vital in making a difference between success and failure.

Ln: Do you think that the IIGEP was “malevolent and anti-Sri Lankan?” Personally, I felt the IIGEP assistants should not have forged such close ties with the CPA because this relationship really complicated things.
DN: No. I am unaware of any IIGEP-CPA relationship.

Ln: Who is serving “national interest” where commission proceedings are concerned?
DN: There may be different perceptions of ‘national interest.’ In my opinion, if the commission is successful in reaching robust conclusions in several cases - even if some of those recommended to be prosecuted are police or service personnel - that would serve national interest. It would help to boost the reputation of the state and the nation. It would also help to greatly increase confidence, nationally and internationally, that the Sri Lankan state is capable of upholding human rights and meeting justice to victims of terrible human rights violations. It would also help to enhance the reputation of the commission, and increase confidence in, and the effectiveness of, future national commissions. In contrast, if no such findings come out of the commission, it would be an unqualified disaster, for the victims, for nation and for the state. [lakbimanews.lk]