Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena held a meeting with nine senior army officers who lead military operations during the final stages of the armed conflict in 2009, to allay concerns that they be prosecuted for mass atrocities.

The Sunday Times reported that at the meeting, which took place at the Outreach Hotel in Negombo, the military officers explained their role during the final phase of the armed conflict.

Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed during the closing stages, with a UN report released in September outlining reports of violations of international humanitarian law. A subsequent UN Human Rights Council mandated an accountability mechanism to prosecute the perpetrators.

The senior commanders, some of whom are reaching their retirement age of 55, reportedly did not inform the Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiaratchchi or Army Commander Lt. Gen. Chrisanthe de Silva that they would be meeting the president, breaking Sri Lankan military protocol.

US Ambassador Samantha Power praised the Sri Lankan president’s pledges to reduce his presidential powers as “striking” in an address to the UN Security Council this week.

Speaking on what Ambassador Power called “this desire to extend one’s term or to ignore term limits” in parts of Africa, she drew on her recent visit to Sri Lanka and the North-East of the island.

A Tamil youth has been arrested for photocopying the suicide note of R. Senthuran.

The 23-year-old man from Jaffna, Balendran Prakash, was arrested by Koppay police on Tuesday.

Rajeswaran Senthuran committed suicide last Thursday in protest at the ongoing detention of Tamil political prisoners.

His suicide note, a letter in which the 18-year-old called on the Sri Lankan President to release all Tamil political prisoners with immediate effect, was found in one of his exercise books.

The Sri Lankan government will not released any fishing trawlers seized from Tamil Nadu fishermen but plans to auction them off instead, the Daily FT quoted the director general of the department of fisheries and aquatic resources, Lal Fernando as saying.

“The Ministry has taken a firm decision not to release any trawler or mechanised boat caught violating the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) of Sri Lanka. We will release the Indian fishermen, but not their boats and trawlers,” Mr Fernando reportedly said.

“Though, we keep the trawlers in our custody to discourage them poaching into our waters, there is no reduction in the number of Indian fishermen poaching in Sri Lankan territorial waters,” he added.