{"id":8155,"date":"2020-02-13T09:09:20","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T09:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/?p=8155"},"modified":"2020-02-13T09:09:20","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T09:09:20","slug":"foreign-service-officer-linked-to-journalist-recalled-as-probe-intensifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/foreign-service-officer-linked-to-journalist-recalled-as-probe-intensifies\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Service officer linked to journalist recalled as probe intensifies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">A Foreign Service officer linked to a journalist, who is under investigation in the Swiss Embassy abduction case, has been recalled to Colombo, the Colombo Gazette learns.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Foreign Service officer Gihan Indragupta, the husband of former Sunday Observer Editor Dharisha Bastians has been recalled to Colombo from Geneva.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The Colombo Gazette learns that Indragupta has been asked to return by the Foreign Ministry following pressure from the President\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Bastians, an outspoken journalist, has been linked to the Swiss Embassy abduction case and is being investigated by the Criminal Investigations Department.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">She and her family were forced to flee the country soon after the 16 November Presidential election.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Earlier this week the CID had interrogated journalist Anurangi Singh as part of its investigations into the alleged kidnapping.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The Colombo Magistrate\u2019s Court was told that Singh was questioned over Bastians and possible links to the incident involving the Swiss Embassy staffer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Swiss Embassy employee Garnian Banniester Francis is out on bail after she was arrested and remanded over claims she made that she was kidnapped.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The employee was arrested on 16 December on the grounds of falsifying evidence but was granted bail on 30 December.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Courtesy: Colombo Gazette<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Foreign Service officer linked to a journalist, who is under investigation in the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-srilankan-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globaltamilnews.net\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}