President Maithripala Sirisena on Friday pledged to commence a special process at the end of the month to address and solve the issues of Tamil prisoners arrested and detained under the prevention of terrorism laws, Opposition Leader R Sampanthan told BBC.

{module lolc}

The undertaking was conveyed to Justice Minister, Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and Opposition Leader, R. Sampanthan over a telephone conversation on Friday.

Accordingly, the government would commence a special process on October 31 to solve this issue, which would be complete by November 7.

TNA MPs Sampanthan and Sumanthiran met Rajapashe at the Justice Ministry on Friday to discuss the issues of prisoners who had launched a hunger strike, calling for their release and to expedite the cases which had been in progress for years.

Both Rajapakshe and Sumanthiran visited prison inmates in the Welikada prison earlier in the week where Rajapakshe pledged to convene a high level meeting of government ministers to discuss the demands raised by the prisoners.

He also said that the government would solve the issue by the end of the year.

However, since the inmates rejected this undertaking, the TNA MPs met with Rajapakshe to discuss the matter.

The suspected ex-LTTE detainees launched a hunger strike last Monday across several prisons in the island.