A hardline Sri Lankan monk who is a close ally of ousted former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa has been sentenced to nine months in prison for insulting Islam and inciting religious hatred.
Galagodaatte Gnanasara was convicted on Thursday for statements dating back to 2016.
Sri Lanka rarely convicts Buddhist monks, but this is the second time Gnanasara, who has been repeatedly accused of hate crimes and anti-Muslim violence, has been jailed.
The sentence handed down by the Colombo Magistrate’s Court comes after he was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 for a six-year sentence related to intimidation and contempt of court.
Gnanasara was arrested in December over statements he made during a 2016 press conference, where he made several derogatory comments against Islam.
On Thursday, the court announced that all citizens, regardless of religion, have the right to freedom of religion according to the Constitution.
he was also fined 1,500 Sri Lankan rupees ($5; £4). Failure to pay the fine would result in an additional month of imprisonment, the court decision added.
Gnanasara appealed the sentence.
He was a trusted ally of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was forced to resign and flee abroad following mass protests over the island nation’s economic crisis in 2022.
During Rajapaksa’s presidency, Gnanasara, who also heads a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist group, was appointed head of a presidential task force on legal reforms aimed at protecting religious harmony.
After Rajapaksa’s expulsionGnanasara was jailed last year on a similar charge related to hate speech against the country’s Muslim minority, but was granted bail while he appealed his four-year sentence.
In 2018, he was sentenced to six years for contempt of court and intimidating the wife of a political cartoonist who is believed to have disappeared. But he served only nine months of that sentence because he was pardoned by Maithripala Sirisena who was the country’s president at the time.
