Related Articles
Gnanasara was arrested in December for remarks he made throughout a 2016 media convention, the place he made a number of derogatory remarks towards Islam.
On Thursday, the courtroom stated that every one residents, no matter faith, are entitled to the liberty of perception underneath the Structure.
He was additionally given a high quality of 1,500 Sri Lankan rupees ($5; £4). Failure to pay the high quality would end in a further month of imprisonment, the courtroom’s ruling added.
Gnanasara has filed an enchantment towards the sentence. The courtroom rejected a request from his legal professionals to free him on bail till a last judgment was made on the enchantment.
He was a trusted ally of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was compelled to resign and flee overseas following mass protests over the island nation’s financial disaster in 2022.
Throughout Rajapaksa’s presidency, Gnanasara, who additionally leads a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist group, was appointed head of a presidential job drive on authorized reforms geared toward defending spiritual concord.
After Rajapaksa’s ouster, Gnanasara was jailed final yr for the same cost associated to hate speech towards the nation’s Muslim minority however was granted bail whereas interesting his four-year sentence.
In 2018, he was sentenced to 6 years for contempt of courtroom and intimidating the wife of a political cartoonist who’s extensively believed to have been disappeared. Nonetheless, he solely served 9 months of that sentence as a result of he acquired a pardon by Maithripala Sirisena who was the nation’s president on the time.
