Sri Lanka's president on Thursday pardoned and released an army officer sentenced to death for slitting the throats of Tamil civilians, including four children, during the island's bloody ethnic war.

Staff Sergeant Sunil Ratnayake was to be hanged for the December 2000 massacre in a case held up by previous Sri Lankan governments as an example of rare accountability over abuses during the conflict.

A court convicted him of murdering eight members of the Tamil minority, including a five-year-old and three teenagers after a 13-year trial.

They were killed as they returned to their bombed homes to salvage what was left of their belongings, and their bodies were found buried in a cesspit near an army camp at Mirusuvil on the Jaffna peninsula.

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the officer's appeal and upheld the death penalty last year.

But President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had now "instructed the Ministry of Justice to release Sgt Ratnayake from prison", a spokeswoman for his office said.

Human Rights watchdog Amnesty International condemned the pardoning and said it was "reprehensible" to use the Coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to release those convicted of heinous crimes.

"After many long years, the victims of the Mirusuvil massacre... finally got a semblance of justice in 2015. It is despicable to have that justice reversed through an arbitrary executive decision," AI's regional director Biraj Patnaik said in a statement.

Rajapaksa, a retired army officer, came to power in November promising to free military personnel jailed for a string of offences during the previous administration.

He and his brother Mahinda, now serving as prime minister, are adored by the island's Sinhala majority for spearheading the defeat of separatist Tamil militants to end the country's 37-year Tamil separatist war in 2009.

The armed forces were internationally condemned for atrocities committed during the conflict, but Sri Lankan soldiers have seldom been tried in civilian courts.

Government troops are alleged to have killed at least 40,000 Tamil civilians in the final stages of the war -- an allegation the Rajapaksas have denied.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Sri Lanka's main political party for the minority community, condemned what it said was an "opportunistic" decision to release Ratnayake.

Norway extradites Islamist preacher to Italy
Oslo (AFP) March 26, 2020 - Norway announced Thursday that it had extradited a fundamentalist Islamic preacher to Italy, despite the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, where he has been sentenced to jail for leading a jihadist network.

"Krekar is no longer in Norway. Krekar has today been extradited to Italy," Norwegian Justice Minister Monica Maeland told a press conference.

The 63-year-old Iraqi Kurd -- known as Mullah Krekar, but named Najumuddin Faraj Ahmad -- was arrested in July 2019 after he was convicted in his absence by an Italian court and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The Italian court found him guilty of having led a now dismantled jihadist network, Rawti Shax, a Kurdish movement with alleged links to the Islamic State group and which is suspected of planning attacks in the West.

Krekar arrived in Norway in 1991 as a refugee.

Norway's Supreme Court authorised the extradition in early February, ending Krekar's legal attempts to avoid deportation.

Considered a threat to national security in Norway, Mullah Krekar had been the subject of deportation proceedings since 2003, when Norway first decided to deport him to Iraq.

However, the decision was never implemented, due to concerns that he might suffer torture and face the death penalty there.

The deportation to Italy comes at a time when that country is the hardest hit in the world by the new coronavirus pandemic, with more than 7,500 deaths.

"We have been given assurances that he will receive the help he should have and needs," Maeland told the press conference when asked whether Krekar risked contracting the potentially deadly COVID-19.

Krekar's lawyer, Brynjar Meling, told AFP the extradition marked "a day of shame" for the Norwegian authorities and constituted a "denial of justice".

According to Meling, Krekar is particularly at risk because he suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure.

Krekar, who founded the radical Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, is designated a terrorist by the UN and the US and has spent several years in Norwegian prisons for issuing threats and calling for murder.

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