Fact Check: Ali Sabry states that Dr. Safi saga was staged by SLPP ?

President’s Counsel M. Ali Sabry, who leads SLPP presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s legal team was in the limelight last week with the Court of Appeal deciding to dismiss the writ petition which was filed seeking an Interim Order restraining Gotabaya Rajapaksa from holding out or claiming that he is a citizen of Sri Lanka and from acting on the basis of the purported Dual Citizenship Certificate

Social media steams were a buzz yesterday(08th) quoting a statement from the Facebook account of Mohamed Ali Sabry, claiming that he accepted that Dr. Shafi’s case (who was taken into custody and later released on allegations of forcibly sterilised women during C-section surgeries) was a fabricated story from SLPP , as shown below.

The original post quoting a screenshot of a Facebook conversation carried out with Ali Shabry stated that “දොස්තර ශාෆිගේ වඳ සැත්කම් කතාව පොහොට්ටුවෙන් නිර්මාණය කළ බොරුවක් බව ගෝඨාගේ නීතිඥ අලි සබ්රි පිළිගනියි” which translated to “Gotabaya’s lawyer Ali Shabry admits that Dr. Shafi's story on infertility surgeries was a fabricated lie created by SLPP.

Same story was published on number of websites and had a lot of traction on Twitter as well.

In a twitter post Manjula Basnayake@BasnayakeM had stated that “SLPP activist & Gotabaya Rajapaksa's lawyer Ali Sabry accepts that SLPP created the Dr Shafi Drama. He says he has initiated a internal dialogue to change.”

Fact Check (සත්‍ය තොරතුරු විමර්ශනය කිරීම)

In order to verify these claims we checked the Facebook account of Ali Sabry in order to locate the original conversation based on which these claims were made and were able to locate the original statement where these comments were made which stated “සියලු අන්තවාදීන් හා ජාතිවාදීන් පරාජය කලයුතුය. විවිධත්වය ශක්තියක් කරගතයුතුය. මානසික රෝගීන්ට පුතිකාර කලයුතුය!” translating to “All extremists and racists must be defeated. Diversity should be strengthened and mentally ill people should be treated!”

This statement had generated a lot of reactions and comments and it was evident that part of this conversation was used for the above claims stating that President’s Counsel Ali Sabry accepted that Dr Safi saga was a drama created by SLPP. Below is the part of the screenshot which led to the claim.

When inspecting the comments in full it was evident that Mohamed Ali Sabry had clarified in a later comment what he meant by his reply and stating that his reply had been twisted to give a false picture.

“My this comment, where I meant that all parties including SLPP May have extremists have been twisted to give a false message. There is no shying away from the fact that there are extremists in almost all political parties who need to be marginalized. It is disappointing and disgusting when some so-called senior journalists and paid and rented Twitters totally distort the message for political expediency thus further polarizing the situation. My comment that all parties have extremist elements and we should fight both internally and externally to marginalize such elements have been twisted and tweeted by UNP. We will continue our struggle to build a strong united and peaceful Sri Lanka where all Sri Lankans irrespective of their race religion or ethnicity will feel safe secure and dignified!”

Furthermore, Mohamed Ali Sabry in a Facebook post from his account had mentioned that one of his comments to say there are extremists across the party line and need to deal with it, is been quoted totally out of context, as shown below.

Conclusion:

From our investigation, it is evident the claim “Dr Safi saga was a drama created by SLPP - Mohamed Ali Sabry” has been quoted out of context. President’s Counsel Mohamed Ali Sabry had stated that there is no shying away from the fact that there are extremists in almost all political parties who need to be marginalized including that of SLPP.