originally published in the Daily Nation
Nearly one month after the death of a high-ranking United Nations lawyer, the arrest of three men in Arusha, Tanzania hopes to shed light on inconsistent claims he died of natural causes.
Few pieces of information have been collected on the last hours of Shyamlal Rajapaksa’s life, a prosecuting lawyer for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in Arusha, Tanzania, leading police investigators and the United Nations to backtrack and backtrack again on how he died.
At different times throughout the investigations, police and other officials have claimed Mr Rajapaksa died of drug overdoses, murder, and most recently, a natural causes.
“He died of a stroke,” says Bocar Sy, a information officer for the ICTR in Arusha. “What caused that? We don’t know. We don’t yet have access to the final medical report.”
But the police aren’t so sure.
The subsequent arrest of three men last week hopes to clarify his last moments.
“We’re still looking for more clues on the death. It’s only after investigations are complete that we can conclusively say what killed him,” Arusha police commander Matei Basilio said.
Mr Rajapaksa was found dead in his living room, face-down in a pool of his own blood on the morning of August 11, by a housemaid. Police collected samples of narcotics from the room that initial reports said he was taking with two men the night before.
Police first said he had likely died of a drug overdose, and a search was on for his companions, who, a resident guard said, had never been there before.
Two weeks ago, the United Nations and police officials claimed that Mr Rajapaksa, a nephew of Sri Lanka’ Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, was murdered, possibly by the two unknown assailants.
The United Nations backtracked last Monday on the details, saying instead he had died of natural causes. They said it was conclusive. No reason was given for the reversal.
As for the two people he was with the night before he died, there had been no trace of them, until they, and another were taken into custody last Thursday. Their identifications remain undisclosed.
Police say they are still awaiting results from the forensics test in Dar es Salaam to tell, exactly, how Mr. Rajapaska died, but his family says little weight should be given to those words.
Mr Rajapaska’s mother has told media in Tanzania and Sri Lanka that her son was murdered over a report he was allegedly writing on the Rwandan genocide, and that the United Nations is behind a cover-up.
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