AFP/Colombo

Sri Lanka’s police yesterday seized a fleet of more than 50 state-owned vehicles, including bullet-proof limousines, that were not returned after president Mahinda Rajapakse’s toppling in this month’s elections.
A police spokesman said 53 vehicles belonging to the presidential secretariat had been recovered from an open patch of land in Colombo as part of efforts to track down 128 vehicles that disappeared after the
January 8 polls.
“We are conducting investigations on how these 53 vehicles ended up at this yard,” Ajith Rohana said.
Some of the cars were wrecks while others appeared to have been hastily abandoned with bottles of water and food left inside.
More than half the vehicles were bullet-proof, Rohana added.
Among the vehicles was an armour-plated BMW that was wrecked in a claymore mine attack in Colombo in 2006. Its passenger, the then defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, the president’s younger brother,
escaped without injury.
The cars were found a day after the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena pledged to trace billions of dollars in stolen wealth stashed abroad by members of the
previous regime.
Rajapakse and his powerful family are accused of syphoning large sums of money from the public coffers during his decade in power, which ended when he was voted out this month.
The new government yesterday said it will appoint an independent commission to probe the last stages of the country’s civil war that ended in 2009, a minister said.
Cabinet spokesperson and Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne told Xinhua that the commission will consist of professionals who would launch a full inquiry into the alleged human rights violations during the last months of the country’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
He said discussions with all political party leaders would also be held regarding the appointment of the commission.
“We will consult other party leaders as well. The commission will comprise of professionals who are capable of conducting the inquiry. We will appoint the commission soon,” Senaratne said.
Following the Jan 8 presidential election, newly elected President Maithripala Sirisena’s government pledged to investigate the alleged human rights violations during the final stages of the civil war.
Former president Mahinda Rajapakse and his government had been under sustained pressure from the UN and international human rights watchdogs to conduct an international probe into the last stages of the three-decade war.
The Rajapakse government had stood firm that it would not allow any international probe, assuring that no human rights violations had taken place.
However, in a run-up to the presidential election, Rajapakse promised a judicial inquiry into allegations that his troops had killed thousands of Tamil civilians in last phase of the war, as pressure mounted from his
opponent.