A conservative Sri Lankan friar who is a near alliance of ousted former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa has received a nine-month prison sentence for insulting Islam and inciting religious anger.
Galagodaatte Gnanasara was found guilty on Thursday of making the comment, which date back to 2016.
Sri Lanka often convicts Buddhist priests, but this marks the second time that Gnanasara, who has regularly been accused of love acts and anti-Muslim murder, has been jailed.
The word, handed down by the Colombo Magistrate’s Court, comes after a national forgive he received in 2019 for a six-year word related to harassment and contempt of court.
Gnanasara was detained in December for remarks he made during a 2016 internet meeting that included a number of disparaging remarks against Islam.
On Thursday, the judge said that all people, regardless of religion, are entitled to the independence of opinion under the Constitution.
he was also given a fine of 1, 500 Sri Lankan rupees ($ 5, £4 ). Failure to pay the good may result in an additional quarter of prison, the judge’s ruling added.
Gnanasara has challenged the statement.
He was a trusted ally of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was forced to step down and retreat worldwide as a result of widespread protests over the area government’s financial crisis in 2022.
During Rajapaksa’s president, Gnanasara, who likewise leads a Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist party, was appointed head of a national task force on constitutional reforms aimed at protecting spiritual cooperation.
After Rajapaksa’s ouster, Gnanasara was jailed last year for a similar charge related to hate speech against the country’s Muslim minority but was granted bail while appealing 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 widely believed to have been disappeared. However, he only served nine months of that sentence because he received a pardon by Maithripala Sirisena who was the country’s president at the time.