A judge at Chelmsford Crown Court freed him on £10,000 bail responding to a petition filed earlier in the court, seeking his release on bail. Lama will be released by Monday after posting the bail amount and completing other necessary legal procedures, according to Deputy Chief of Mission at Nepalese Embassy in the UK Tej Bahadur Chhetri. [break]
Earlier, Westminster magistrate had remanded Lama in custody, denying his plea for release on bail. Next hearing on Colonel Lama is due for June 5.
Though Lama will be free after posting the bail amount and completing other legal procedures, he won´t be allowed to travel outside UK. He will have to present himself before the court as and when required.
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha welcomed the court´s verdict. “We had been expecting this verdict from the court right since the beginning. We want to see this issue settled positively at the earliest,” Shrestha told Republica.
A specialist unit of the Metropolitan Police Service had arrested Colonel Lama, 46, in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex on January 4. Lama is accused of torturing two detainees between April and October 2005 at the Gorusinghe Army Barracks in Kapilvastu district when the Maoist insurgency was at its peak.
Lama, who was serving with the UN mission in South Sudan, had reached the UK to visit his family members over Christmas holiday. He was held under Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act, a law that defines torture as a "universal jurisdiction" crime.
However, the arrest of serving NA Colonel in the UK had evoked a serious diplomatic tension between Nepal and the UK. While the UK government justified the arrest saying that it was done as per the ´universal jurisdiction´, Nepal government maintained that the arrest made without prior information to the government concerned was not only against the international laws but also against the "general principle of the jurisdiction of a sovereign country”.
Nepal government had even summoned UK Envoy to Nepal John A Tucknott and handed over a ´protest note´ to the UK government, demanding immediate release of Lama.
Earlier, the government had decided to put all necessary efforts including extending legal and financial support to secure release of Colonel Lama. A few days ago, a Taskforce was formed under Defense Secretary Tilak Ram Sharma to make necessary initiatives to secure the release.
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