Senior Lanka scribe beaten up

Sat, May 24 02:00 AM

A senior journalist with a leading English daily was picked up by unidentified people late on Thursday night and beaten up severely before being released early on Friday. Keith Noyahr, deputy editor and defence analyst with The Nation, has been admitted to the Colombo National hospital with head injuries.

``It was almost as if he was tortured,'' Sunanda Deshapriya of Free Media Movement, an association of journalists, told HT. Following angry protests from journalists, President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for a full investigation into the abduction and attack on Noyahr. Police spokesman N.K. Ilangakoon said three police teams have been deployed to investigate the incident.

Noyahr was kidnapped from his outside his house, when he stepped out of the car he was returning home in, to open the gate. His car was found with the lights on and engine running.

The FMM has alleged that the abduction could be a result of Noyahr's scathing analysis of the government's handling of the country's long drawn war against the LTTE..

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