A Sri Lankan court today ordered that a powerful former minister be held until March 4 over charges linked to a massacre of 10 Muslim opposition supporters after polls in December.
The killings stirred communal tension in a country racked by decades of ethnic strife and turned former Power Minister Anuruddha Ratwatte, the uncle of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, into one of Sri Lanka's most wanted men.
The suspect shall be held in remand until March 4, Magistrate Inoka Ranasinghe told a court crammed with reporters.
Mr Ratwatte was flown by helicopter to the court in the central town of Teldeniya after the attorney general ordered his arrest yesterday ending months of speculation and Muslim protests.
An army general and former deputy defence minister who once ran the government's military campaign in the ethnic war, Ratwatte turned up in court wearing a safari suit instead of his trademark military fatigues.
Mr Ratwatte, who was arrested at his home in a plush Colombo suburb, has denied knowledge of the massacre in the central town of Madawala which was blamed on gunmen loyal to the then-ruling People's Alliance party.
Courts had earlier issued arrest warrants against Mr Ratwatte's two sons. They disappeared after the election, which ended the seven-year rule of Kumaratunga's People's Alliance.
The polls gave the United National Party control of parliament with the support of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, to which the 10 victims belonged.
The killings sparked riots in the central hills in early December, forcing the government to impose a curfew for several days to keep a lid on tensions between minority Muslims and the majority Sinhalese community to which Ratwatte belongs. Clashes between Muslims and Sinhalese are rare but ethnic relations soured last year after communal riots in another part of the central highlands.
The government, controlled mostly by Sinhalese, has been locked for nearly two decades in a battle with separatist guerrillas from the larger Tamil minority.