Trial of Meetra Surik

The trial of Meetra Surik took place in 3959 BBY at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. In this trial, a Jedi General of the Mandalorian Wars was exiled from the Jedi Order, and sent to wander the galaxy far from the battlegrounds where she fought, in order to achieve true understanding of what she had wrought at Malachor V in the close of the conflict.
Meetra Surik was since often known as the Jedi Exile.
==History==
Jedi Masters Kavar, Vrook Lamar, Lonna Vash, Atris and Zez-Kai Ell were all part of the Jedi High Council when they judged Surik in this trial, with Lamar, Vash and Atris being the most unsympathetic, especially Atris. According to Kavar, at the time of the trial, they had just learned that Revan had betrayed them, and that he was returning from the Unknown Regions at the head of a Sith armada. Meetra Surik was the only Jedi to face the Council's judgment after the wars, and with all the others being dead or fallen to the dark side of the Force, many thought her to be a spy. Vrook and Atris believed that the only reason she did not follow Revan against the Jedi was because she could no longer feel the Force.
Vash was among the Masters who convicted her the most, but she felt Surik had changed since the events on Malachor, and she stood up to Atris after Surik had left the Council chamber, when she said the wound Surik carried was a sign of dark side corruption. As she was sentenced to exile, the former Jedi General was asked to surrender her lightsaber, which she defiantly stabbed into the center stone. Atris would recover the weapon and keep it as a reminder of what can happen when passions dictate one's actions, which is how she thought it was with Surik when she went to war. The truth, however, is that Atris wished she had the strength to follow her, which she almost did actually, eventually renouncing out of fear to defy the Council. She once told Brianna, one of her Handmaidens, that Meetra Surik was a personal hero to her, and that she died inside when Surik chose Revan over the Jedi.
Almost a decade later, Atris would arrange for Meetra Surik to return to Republic space and leak knowledge of her presence in hopes of drawing the Sith out. The Force brought her to the Telosian Jedi Academy, where Atris was willing to put her on trial again for dooming the Telosian Restoration Project, which was really her fault for exposing Surik to a Sith attack in the skirmish at Peragus II. Meetra Surik's utility droid, T3-M4, recovered from Atris' databanks a holorecord of her trial in which the councilors debated after her departure. She discovered her going to war was not really what concerned them when they cast her out of the Order, so she sought them out and spoke to them, with the exception of Lonna Vash who had perished. As she inquired of them the real motivations for her exile, she discovered the true reason was in fact that they were afraid of her, of her innate ability to change people through Force bonding. Kavar and Zez-Kai Ell would even admit as much, that to see what she had become after losing her Force-sensitivity was terrifying, and that it was probably why they sent her away rather than try to understand what happened. The assassin droid HK-47, who counted among his masters both Revan and Meetra Surik, once speculated that Revan allowed her to return to the Council because he felt that it would serve to erode their will, like parading defeated leaders before their people.
The very day of the trial, Master Ell decided to leave the Jedi Order. When Meetra Surik found him on Nar Shaddaa, he explained that the reason for which he and many other Jedi scattered was their disillusion on the Jedi teachings, which he had come to recognize as flawed. He felt that the fall of so many Jedi throughout history was due to some sort of backlash created by the self-righteous acts Jedi did to preserve the galaxy, and that the one chance to see where they had gone wrong, they cast it aside. He even admitted Surik was right to do what she did, that the Jedi who went to war were not to blame, for they were taught to protect innocents, even when their Masters would not. However, when Surik encouraged the remaining Jedi Masters to gather on Dantooine, their judgment remained. He, Vrook and Kavar were firm in the belief that the wound Meetra Surik carried would bring about the end of the Jedi, so they decreed she was to leave for good, and without her tie to the Force. The three were confronted and killed by Darth Traya in the ruins of the Jedi Enclave as they attempted to cut her off from the Force.
==Behind the scenes==
This event is depicted in the computer and video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Among the scrapped ideas which can still be found in the game files, there is evidence that at some point Kreia was intended to be behind the Council's verdict. Cut content also includes more lines from the trial scene, in which Vash said the Jedi had played into the hands of the enemy when they let the Order be split in the Mandalorian Wars, and that the only chance to know what had happened to Meetra Surik and what the future lay in store for her, was to let her return to Malachor V. The color of the Surik's lightsaber, chosen in a conversation with Atton Rand after Peragus, determines what color the lightsaber in the holorecord is and what color the lightsaber Atris kept after the trial. Canonically, the color of her second lightsaber appears to be of the cyan crystal, however, it is unknown what color was the blade of the one taken by Atris.
==Appearances==
*The Old Republic: Revan 
*Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords 
==Notes and references==
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Category:Legal trials