Sri Lanka has been named one of 54 countries that assisted the United States in its torture programme according to a New York based human rights group.

The report released by the Open Society Justice Initiative claims that the Sri Lankan government of 2003 under the Presidency of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga permitted the use of its airspace and airports for flights operated for the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme.

Therefore Sri Lanka was named along with 53 other countries that either hosted secret prisons or helped transport or torture terrorist suspects as part of the CIA’s torture programme.

Regarding Sri Lanka the report read:

“Sri Lanka permitted use of its airspace and airports for flights associated with CIA extraordinary rendition operations. Court documents indicate that at least one flight operated by Richmor Aviation

(a company that operated flights for the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program) landed in Sri Lanka in 2003. The documents show that between August 12 and 15, 2003, a Richmor flight registered as N85VM took off from Washington, D.C., and stopped in Bangkok before making another stop at Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike international airport in Colombo, and then flying on to Kabul, Dubai, and Shannon airport in Ireland. That flight coincided in time with the capture of Riduan Isamuddin (Hambali) in Bangkok in 2003. Isamuddin spent the next three years in secret CIA prisons before ultimately being transferred as a “high value detainee” to Guantánamo Bay in September 2006, where he remains detained. There have been no known judicial cases or investigations in Sri Lanka relating to its participation in CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations.”