COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s deposed former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa returned to the country Friday, an airport official said, seven weeks after he fled amid the island’s worst-ever economic crisis.
Rajapaksa was festooned with flowers by a welcoming party of ministers and politicians as he disembarked at the main international airport, the official added -- in a sign of his enduring influence in the Indian Ocean nation critics say he led to ruin.