Defence secretary’s friend was familiar sight to network of diplomats, politicians and journalists
It was a classic south Asian scene. Sundown, some drinks, a colonial-era hotel with fans cooling a terrace, waves crashing on the nearby beach, a group of British diplomats, a minister – and a 34-year-old businessman called Adam Werritty.
Quite what Werritty was doing at the table of the Galle Face hotel on Colombo’s seafront that evening in July this year was unclear even to the senior Foreign Office diplomats sitting with him. All they knew was that he had some connection to Liam Fox, the defence secretary who had flown out for a weekend to make a speech to a private local foundation.
Fox and his party slept at the high commissioner’s 1960s residence, filling its four guest bedrooms. Werritty made his own arrangements.
Yet he was present at the minister’s speech – in honour of a Sri Lankan foreign minister assassinated in 2005 – and at the tea afterwards where he worked a room full of local politicians, diplomats and journalists. Then it was on to the Galle Face for a sundowner.
Werritty’s connections in Sri Lanka were already extensive. Around the time of Fox’s speech, Werritty was seen in the company of Rohitha Bogollagama, Sri Lankan foreign minister from 2007 until April 2010, and Wijedasa Rajapakse, a constitutional lawyer and senior opposition MP, in the Spice restaurant of the Hilton, the luxury hotel in Colombo where Werritty had often stayed. Bogollagama refused to speak to the Guardian earlier this week, referring all inquiries to the Sri Lankan foreign ministry, but Rajapakse confirmed the meeting.
"[Werritty] was introduced to me as an associate of Dr Fox by Mr Bogollagama," he said on Thursday. "I was just there with my family and bumped into them by accident in the restaurant."
Werritty had last been in Sri Lanka in December 2010 when he and Fox had got involved in a difficult diplomatic incident. Fox had been forced to cancel his voyage as it had coincided with the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables revealing American diplomats’ concerns over the Sri Lankan government’s human rights record. Werritty was left to explain the situation to local officials.
This, however, he was already well-equipped to do. He and Fox had met the president himself, Mahinda Rajapaksa, in a suite in London’s Dorchester hotel only two weeks earlier. Werritty relayed the Sri Lankan request that the cancellation be termed a "postponement" to his friend. The official announcement duly referred to Fox being unavoidably detained in the Gulf.
A key interlocutor was the president’s foreign affairs fixer, a controversial former businessman called Sachin de Wass Gunawardene.
This was not the first time Fox had done Sri Lanka – or its government – a favour. His own relationship with the troubled island nation dates back to the mid-1990s, when as a junior foreign officer minister he brokered an agreement between competing parties to co-operate in the search for peace. It did not hold but the "Fox Accord" laid the basis for a long involvement in the island’s tortuous politics. A regular visitor throughout the last decade, it was a chance meeting with Bogollagama, the then foreign minister, in 2007 that brought the then shadow defence secretary back into the orbit of the Sri Lankan political elite.
Rajapaksa and his government were in need of friends. A populist who retains significant support among the ethnic Sinhala Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka, Rajapaksa was set on a radical solution to the long-running civil war that had crippled the nation’s development over previous decades. An expanded army with new equipment, backed by paramilitaries, would fight on to the finish, eradicating the Tamil Tiger separatists in the north. Anticipating an international outcry, the government actively sought out helpful voices overseas. Some could be purchased and a multimillion-pound contract with lobbyists Bell Pottinger was concluded.
With political officers in London telling Sri Lanka that Labour was almost certain to lose coming elections, Fox was seen in Colombo as a major potential asset. Researchers working for human rights organisations during this period were so concerned by indications that the Sri Lankan government might be seeking to enlist Fox’s support to ease restrictions on arms imports from the UK to the island nation, they raised their worries with the Foreign Office in London. Sources say now that they received specific information that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the feared defence secretary and the brother of the president, had asked Fox to lobby for more access to British weapons.
In fact, with evidence of human rights abuses within Sri Lanka mounting, the restrictions were tightened.
In March 2009, as the fighting intensified in the north of the island, Fox made a further visit to Colombo, meeting both government and opposition figures. It is unclear if Werritty accompanied him on previous visits but local journalists recall seeing the younger man in Sri Lanka with the minister during almost all visits from spring 2009 onwards. Others said they believe they saw him on trips earlier, possibly from the middle of the decade, but that certain identification is impossible.
Often Werritty’s role appeared unclear to those who met him. One local reporter remembered a series of emails exchanged with Werritty discussing details for a potential interview with Fox. "He was the man to go to for access," he said.
Others saw Werritty in press conferences. "I just thought he was part of the [Fox’s] staff," one said.
Ravi Karunanayake, an opposition MP, met Werritty with Fox in August 2009 in Colombo. He told the Guardian that, with nothing indicating the contrary, he had believed Werritty was an aide. Though he was careful to meet representatives of all communities, Fox’s visits in March and August 2009 were seen by some observers as an endorsement of the hardline government which has so far refused either a full inquiry into the claims that tens of thousands of Tamil civilians were killed at the end of the civil war or pressure to move towards any broader postwar political settlement with the Tamil population.
It was in March 2009 that Fox first publicly suggested an investment fund for reconstruction in Tamil zones devastated by decades of conflict. The Sri Lanka Development Trust was registered in the UK but appears to have done little since other than contribute to paying expenses for three of Fox’s trips.
The funding of Werritty’s own travel expenses is unclear. In November 2009, during a trip paid for Fox by the trust and the Sri Lankan government, Werritty is believed to have stayed at the Hilton, where rooms cost from £100 a night.
Reaction to Fox’s troubles in Sri Lanka has been mixed. The affair has been cautiously covered in the local press. No senior government official was prepared to be interviewed by the Guardian.
MA Sumanthiran, a senior Tamil politician, said his hope was that "anyone [like Fox] who is close to the government of Sri Lanka will be in a position of influence with them".
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