ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe has appointed a three-member panel led by a retired Supreme Court Justice to probe the British Channel 4 documentary which said there was an alleged plot linked with the current state intelligence chief behind the attack.
President Wickremesinghe appointed retired Air Force Commander A C M Jayalath Weerakkody and Presidential Counsel Harsha A J Soza as the other two members of the committee “to investigate Channel-4 allegations about the Easter attacks”, the President’s Media Division said on Friday (15).
The British-based Channel 4 documentary revealed with whistle blowers’ allegations that the Easter Sunday attack on April 21, 2019, was a plot involving the current intelligence chief Suresh Sallay to bring former leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa into power.
Both Sallay and Rajapaksa have rejected the allegations.
In the Channel 4 video, a whistle blower who has already left the country identified as Azad Maulana, a former top aide of current state minister Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan, had spoken of Sallay planning the attacks for about three years to help Rajapaksa come into power.
Riding on a national security threat campaign, Rajapaksa won the presidential poll in November 2019 overwhelmingly. However, he failed to probe into the Easter Sunday attack mastermind as promised during his presidential campaign.
In the video, Maulana and another anonymous source say military intelligence had direct contacts with the suicide bombers, and Maulana stated that he arranged a meeting between Sallay and suicide bombers in 2018.
Opposition parties and rights groups have demanded for an independent, international investigation over the allegation.
Successive Sri Lankan governments have rejected calls for international probes but had agreed for local panels.
Past probes by local panels have hardly yielded anything, analysts say. Instead, they have dragged such investigations for many years.
Sri Lanka is already under a United Nations-led international probe on human rights abuses during the final stage of a 26-year war that ended in 2009 and alleged suppression of religious minorities since then.
However, successive governments have rejected both allegations and repeated requests for an independent international probe.
At least 269 people including over 40 foreigners were killed in a series of suicide bombings by Islamist extremists targeting three luxury hotels and three churches during Easter Sunday services.
Rajapaksa soon after winning the presidential poll, transferred key police officials who spearheaded the Easter Sunday attack.
Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ordered early this year former President Maithripala Sirisena, four other officials including then intelligence chief Nilantha Jayawardena to pay compensation totaling 310 million rupees to victims of the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings.
Sri Lankan authorities failed to act on warnings issued by an intelligence agency in neighbouring India 17 days before the coordinated suicide bombings, according to several investigations into the attacks.
Accusations of the involvement of Sri Lankan intelligence operatives have already been reported to courts. However, this is the first time Sallay is directly accused of plotting the attacks. (Colombo/September 15/2023)