Murdered Sri Lankan editor's body to be exhumed

A prominent Sri Lankan newspaper editor killed in 2009 is to be exhumed on Tuesday to aid a new investigation into his murder.

Lasantha Wickrematunge was gunned down in the final months of the country’s brutal civil war.

Her grave in Colombo has been under armed guard since the new autopsy was announced earlier in September, two months after a military intelligence official was arrested in connection with her killing.

According to court documents, investigating authorities requested that Wickrematunge’s body be exhumed again because two separate medical examinations at the time of his death produced contradictory results: one finding he had died due to gunshot injuries, the other finding no evidence of gun wounds at all.

Wickrematunge ran the Sunday Leader, which was frequently critical of the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was in power then.

In January 2009 he had written an editorial saying he believed he would be killed by the government and that an inquiry would come to nothing.

He was killed by unidentified attackers in Colombo three days later.

His death came at a time of intense restrictions on the media in Sri Lanka.

The Sunday Leader had accused the government and the military of rights abuses during their fight against the Tamil Tiger separatist movement.

After his surprise win in elections in 2014, the new president, Maithripala Sirisena, vowed to reform Sri Lanka's treatment of the media and to reopen the investigation into Wickrematunge's murder.