Calling the murder of a 19-year-old woman an “act of impatience,” lame duck Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has released a convicted murderer from a wealthy, high-profile family from death row.
The move has sparked outrage in both Sri Lanka and Sweden, where Yvonne Jonsson was a dual citizen. She was beaten to death in 2005 after an argument with Jude Shramantha Jayamaha, Agence France-Presse reported, her skull shattered into 64 pieces.
Before Sirisena announced the amnesty, the victim’s sister Caroline Jonsson-Bradley expressed concern about the danger Jayamaha posed.
“He showed and continues to show absolutely no remorse for what he has done,” she wrote in an Oct. 22 Facebook post . “We’ve worked hard to rebuild our lives and here we are, going into 15 years, still fighting for justice. Unfortunately, we now have to prepare ourselves for the worst possible outcome, the pardon of my sister’s murderer.”
Initially sentenced to 12 years in prison, Jayamaha filed an appeal that was not only rejected but also transmuted into a death sentence, BBC News reported – a determination that was upheld by the nation’s Supreme Court.
He committed the heinous crime at age 19, and Sirisena attributed his act to youthful impatience. But Jonsson-Bradley had a different story to tell.
“This was not a one-off,” she wrote. “He was known to be violent all his life, at school where he was expelled and at social events when he couldn’t control his jealousy. I experienced this during my brief relationship with him and I recall feeling trapped, scared and helpless. My sister’s murder was not someone losing their patience over a disagreement, it was premeditated. He waited for her outside our apartment though he pretended to me he was going home.”
He got his friend to craft an alibi, she said.
“When my sister arrived home he chased her from the 23rd floor, pushed her, strangled her and then smashed her skull on the cement floor,” Jonnson-Bradley wrote. “She was found on the 19th floor. He had the chance to walk away and to stop but he didn’t. I still recall sitting in court and hearing how her skull was fractured into 64 pieces. My father had to identify his daughter in the morgue with no face. Are those the actions of someone who deserves to be pardoned?”
He washed some of the blood off in a swimming pool before fleeing, she said.
The move is drawing ire across Sri Lanka as the president prepares to depart. He will not be running for reelection, as BBC News reports, since “He failed to get support from his own party to contest the poll.”
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