The UN and human rights groups have criticised Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's decision to pardon a convicted murderer, warning it undermines the rule of law.

Former MP Duminda Silva was sentenced to death along with four others in 2016 for shooting dead a rival politician and three of his supporters in 2011.

Mr Silva, who was a political ally of Mr Rajapaksa, is among 94 prisoners to be given a presidential pardon.

Rights activists have reacted angrily.

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"It shows complete disdain on the part of the executive for the rule of law, for legal process and for public accountability," Ambika Satkunanathan, a human rights lawyer based in Colombo told the BBC.

Mr Rajapaksa came to power on a Sinhala nationalist campaign in November 2019. He was the powerful defence secretary when his elder brother, Mahinda, was president from 2005 to 2015.

Among those released included 16 people from the minority Tamil community accused of links with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

The group was vanquished in a bloody civil war that ended in 2009. Some have been held for more than a decade under the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

Colombo-based diplomats and rights activists have welcomed the early release of those held under the anti-terrorism law, which activists describe as draconian.

The UN and the US have been pressing Sri Lanka for committed during the nearly three-decade old war with the Tamil rebels and to release those held under the PTA. The Sri Lankan government has consistently denied war crime accusations.