In this April 21, 2019 file photo, Sri Lankan Army soldiers secure the area around St. Anthony’s Shrine after a blast on Easter Sunday in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
| Photo Credit: AP

Sri Lanka’s new government announced a probe Tuesday (October 8, 2024) into 2019 Easter bombings that killed 279 people, saying that previous investigations had failed to identify other culprits responsible for the country’s worst-ever attack against civilians.

In the aftermath, officials blamed a local jihadist group for the suicide bombings on three churches and three hotels, but a top Sri Lankan intelligence official was also accused of orchestrating the attack.

Other investigations faulted the authorities for failing to act on warnings from an Indian intelligence agency that an attack was imminent.

“There have been several commissions of inquiry, but some evidence was suppressed,” Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told reporters.

“We want to find out why there were irregularities in the previous investigations, take a fresh look at the incident, expose the culprits, and bring them to justice.”

Ms. Herath’s announcement came days after President Anura Kumara Dissanayake dismissed Sri Lanka’s intelligence chief, Suresh Sallay.

British broadcaster Channel 4 reported last year that Mr. Sallay was linked with the bombers and had met with them prior to the attack.

A whistleblower told the network that he had permitted the attack to proceed with the intention of influencing that year’s presidential election in favour of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Two days after the bombings, Mr. Rajapaksa declared his candidacy and won the November vote in a landslide after promising to stamp out Islamist extremists.

Mr. Sallay, who has denied any involvement in the bombings, was promoted to head Sri Lanka’s main spy agency following Mr. Rajapaksa’s win.

Sri Lanka’s Catholic minority has maintained a campaign for justice since the bombings, saying that prior investigations failed to answer outstanding questions.

President Dissanayake on Sunday visited one of the churches targeted in the Easter Sunday attacks, where 116 people perished, and vowed justice for the victims.

“There is a widespread belief in society that the Easter Sunday attacks may have been carried out to gain political mileage,” Mr. Dissanayake told the congregation.

More than 500 people were wounded in the bombings, which also killed 45 foreigners and crashed the island nation’s lucrative tourism industry.

Last year, the Supreme Court fined then-President Maithripala Sirisena and four senior officials more than $1.03 million in a civil case for their failure to prevent the attacks.

The UN asked Sri Lanka in April to publish parts of previous inquiries into the bombings that had been withheld from the public.

In this April 21, 2019, file photo, Sri Lankan police officers inspect the site of an explosion at the Shangri-la hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s government will appoint a parliamentary committee to investigate allegations made in a British television report that Sri Lankan intelligence had complicity in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 people.
| Photo Credit: AP

Sri Lanka’s government will appoint a parliamentary committee to investigate allegations made in a British television report that Sri Lankan intelligence had complicity in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 people.

A man interviewed in the Channel 4 videos released on Tuesday said he arranged a meeting between a local Islamic State-inspired group and a top state intelligence official to hatch a plot to create insecurity in Sri Lanka and enable Gotabaya Rajapaksa to win the presidential election later that year.

On Wednesday, Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa called for an international inquiry into the bombing attack. “A large majority of the people are of the view that a fair local investigation has not been conducted into this attack,” Mr. Premadasa said in Parliament.

Also read | Sri Lanka’s President assures justice for Easter Sunday victims

The lack of a proper local investigation has led to confusion, he added.

Mr. Premadasa stressed that justice should be delivered to the victims of the attack and therefore, there is a need for “a transparent international investigation to find out the truth about this attack.”

The man in the Channel 4 program, Azad Maulana, was a spokesperson for a breakaway group of the Tamil Tiger rebels that later became a pro-state militia and helped the government defeat the rebels and win Sri Lanka’s long civil war in 2009. Mr. Maulana said he arranged a meeting in 2018 between IS-inspired extremists and a top intelligence officer at the behest of his boss at the time, Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, the leader of the rebel splinter group-turned-political party.

Mr. Rajapaksa was a top defence official during the war, and his older brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, had been defeated in the 2015 elections after 10 years in power.

A group of Sri Lankans inspired by the Islamic State group carried out the six near-simultaneous suicide bombings in churches and tourist hotels on April, 21, 2019. The attacks killed 269 people, including worshippers at Easter Sunday services, locals and foreign tourists, and revived memories of frequent bombings during the quarter-century war.

Fears over national security enabled Gotabaya Rajapaksa to sweep to power, until he was forced to resign in mid-2022 after mass protests over the country’s worst economic crisis.

Mr. Maulana said Chandrakanthan had met the group in prison while in detention on allegations of murder and found they could be useful to create insecurity in the country. Maulana told Channel 4 that he himself did not participate in the meeting, but that the intelligence officer told him later that creating insecurity was the only way to return the Rajapaksa family to power.

After security camera footage of the bombings was released, Maulana recognized the faces of the attackers carrying bomb-laden backpacks as those whom he had arranged to meet with the intelligence officer, Maulana said in the program.

Channel 4 reported that Maulana had been interviewed by United Nations investigators and European intelligence services over his claims.

Rajapaksa has not commented on the claims. Calls to Chandrakanthan went unanswered Wednesday.

Pro-Rajapaksa lawmaker Mahindananda Aluthgamage rejected the accusations in the documentary. He told Parliament that Rajapaksa had no reason to set off bombs or use suicide bombers to get elected because public support was already on his side as shown by the result of local elections held in 2018.

Labor Minister Manusha Nanayakkara told Parliament on Tuesday that details on the investigation would be announced soon.

Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said that authorities had not acted on previous parliamentary and presidential commissions appointed to investigate the attacks.

Officers originally entrusted with investigating the attacks but transferred out by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government should be brought back to assist, and the current group and those named by Channel 4 should have no role in the probe, Ranjith said.

“We sincerely hope that all those requests will be faithfully carried out by the … president and the government of Sri Lanka. Unless such a transparent and sincere investigation is launched, we do not feel truth and justice will be meted out to the innocent victims of the 2019 Easter attacks,” Ranjith said in a statement.