The New Wings activists take part in a silent protest demanding justice of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attack, in Colombo on April 20, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Sri Lanka marks on April 21 five years since Islamist bombers slaughtered 279 people in the island’s deadliest suicide attack, but grieving families say they are still waiting for justice.

Government employee Saman Sirimanna, 59, and his wife Sriyani, 57, lost their two children when a suicide bomber stormed into St. Anthony’s church in the capital Colombo on Easter Day 2019.

It was part of a wave of attacks that included three luxury hotels and two other churches in the majority Buddhist nation.

Mr. Sirimanna said his 19-year-old son and 22-year-old daughter had gone to “seek blessings” for good exam results.

“My loss is irreplaceable”, Mr. Sirimanna told AFP, with tears in his eyes. “My children will never return.”

Among the dead were 45 foreigners, including tourists visiting the island a decade after the end of a brutal civil war.

Mr. Sirimanna is bitter over delays in court proceedings and a dragging investigation into the bombings.

A court last year ruled that Sri Lanka’s ex-president and top officials had failed to heed urgent warnings that the attacks were imminent.

‘Hope’ for justice

An inquiry into the bombings found the attacks were the work of a homegrown jihadist group that declared an affiliation with the Islamic State group.

But survivors and bereaved families are demanding a proper investigation into claims of links between the bombers and Sri Lankan intelligence officials.

“I am the first person who filed legal action,” Mr. Sirimanna said. “I went to court because the authorities did not carry out their responsibilities.”

Evidence tendered during a civil case brought by Mr. Sirimanna and other relatives of the dead showed that Indian intelligence officials warned Colombo of the attack more than two weeks earlier.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that top officials, including then-president Maithripala Sirisena, had been negligent in failing to prevent the bombings. Mr. Sirisena was in Singapore on the day of the attacks.

It ordered the defendants to pay 310 million rupees ($1 million) in compensation to victims and relatives.

But the ruling has yet to be fully implemented as Mr. Sirisena has appealed the order.

“The court gave them six months to pay — they didn’t,” Mr. Sirimanna said, noting the next hearing in the case is scheduled for July.

“We hope at least then there will be some justice,” he added.

‘Hanging on to the Lord’

Successive governments have failed to probe media claims that Suresh Sallay, a top military intelligence official linked to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had connections with the bombers.

Mr. Rajapaksa, a retired army officer, won a landslide presidential election seven months after the attacks, campaigning on a pledge to keep Sri Lanka safe.

He appointed Mr. Sallay as head of Sri Lanka’s main intelligence agency.

Mr. Rajapaksa was ousted around two years ago when protesters stormed his compound during an unprecedented economic crisis.

His successor, President Ranil Wickremesinghe, announced a probe into Mr. Sallay’s relationship with the attackers last September.

But there has been no public announcement of its progress — and the intelligence chief remains in his role.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged an independent investigation with international help to establish the “full circumstances” of the bombings.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the leader of the Catholic church in Sri Lanka, said the lack of a credible investigation had shaken people’s trust in the government.

“We have been critical of government people and various authorities over and over again, but no positive response has come,” he told AFP.

“We are now hanging on to the Lord to settle this matter in order to find out what really happened, pleading with him to take us from ignorance to knowledge.”

Mr. Ranjith will attend a remembrance service for the victims at St. Sebastian’s church on Sunday, one of the places attacked in 2019.

“We are not interested in punishing anybody, but we are interested to know why somebody did that to these people,” he said. “They have a right to know.”

Ranil Wickremesinghe. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Dismissing the possibility of an international probe into the 2019 Easter terror attacks, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe has reiterated that such an investigation into the incident was not permissible under the country’s law.

Responding to Sunday’s editorial in the Catholic Church’s Messenger newspaper titled “An international investigation team is needed for an independent, transparent, and thorough investigation and monitoring”, the President’s Media Division (PMD) said, “We cannot endorse the idea of international investigations into Sri Lanka’s internal matters.” “The Constitution of Sri Lanka and all other existing laws do not provide for conducting international investigations. Consequently, carrying out such investigations would be in violation of the law,” a press release by the PMD said on October 6.

Nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) linked to ISIS carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three Catholic churches and as many luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on April 21, 2019, killing nearly 270 people, including 11 Indians, and injuring more than 500.

The issue of the Easter attacks and its political undertone resurfaced in early September when the U.K.’s Channel 4 television station aired a documentary titled ‘Sri Lanka’s Easter Bombings – Dispatches’, alleging the involvement and complicity of certain government officials, including intelligence service chief Major General Suresh Sallay, in orchestrating the 2019 Easter suicide bombings.

It called the attacks a “crafted act” aimed at forcing a political change in favour of the then-powerful Rajapaksa brothers.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced his candidature three days after the attacks and was elected President seven months later. His elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa was also the country’s former President and Prime Minister. Both Rajapaksa brothers were forced to resign last year amidst the unprecedented economic crisis in the island nation.

“The Minister of Public Security, Tiran Alles, spoke to the Catholic Bishops Conference on Thursday and was informed that the Rev. Father Harold Anthony was in the process of studying a voluminous presidential commission report on the Easter attack investigation that had been delivered to him in April,” the press release said. It added that Mr. Wickremesinghe would meet the Catholic Bishops conference after they study the report.

During a fiery interview with the German state-owned broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) against the backdrop of Channel 4’s allegations last week, Mr. Wickremesinghe dismissed the Channel 4 revelations and said that Sri Lanka will not have any international inquiry into the Easter blasts. “It is out,” he said.

“The Sri Lankan government does not have international investigations. Full stop. Few people may want (it), but the Parliament doesn’t,” he said.

A prime panel headed by retired Supreme Court Justice SI Imam was appointed by Mr. Wickremesinghe to investigate the British channel’s allegations. The Opposition, however, blames the President for going back on his earlier pledge to let Scotland Yard investigate the 2019 attacks.

They claim that Mr. Wickremesinghe is reliant on the support of the Rajapaksas to remain the President and, therefore, would not initiate an inquiry which could expose those behind the attacks. The attacks led to a significant political change in Sri Lanka. It has emerged that the then authorities had ignored prior intelligence on the attack by Indian intelligence agencies.

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.
| Photo Credit: AP

Sri Lanka’s Defence Ministry on Saturday defended the country’s intelligence chief after he was accused by a British television channel as the plotter of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings which killed 270 people, including 11 Indians.

The move came two days after ousted former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s denial of Major General Suresh Sallay’s involvement in the bombings and that he had benefited from the attacks to win the presidential election in November 2019.

UK’s Channel 4 television station on Tuesday aired a documentary titled ‘Sri Lanka’s Easter Bombings – Dispatches’ alleging the involvement and complicity of certain government officials in orchestrating the 2019 Easter suicide bombings.

It called the attacks a “crafted act” aimed at forcing a political change in favour of the Rajapaksa brothers.

“The Ministry of Defence vehemently denounces the accusation of orchestrating the attack and assisting the bombers against a dedicated senior military officer who has served the nation for 36 years,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry maintains that Major General Sallay was serving at the Sri Lanka High Commission in Malaysia from December 2016 until December 2018.

“He left for India on January 3, 2019 and returned to Sri Lanka on November 30, 2019, after completing the National Defence College Course in Delhi”.

The ministry says since the attacks the successive Sri Lankan governments have taken action to uncover the truth.

“They have done so by facilitating transparent investigations conducted by both local and international professional agencies — the comprehensive investigation conducted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States, along with the subsequent verdict rendered by the U.S. Department of Justice, have reaffirmed the findings of local investigations,” it said.

Responding to the claims that Major General Sallay was a Rajapaksa loyalist, Mr. Rajapaka on Thursday said that Mr. Sallay was a career military officer who had served under many presidents and that all military officers are loyal to the State and not to private individuals.

Mr. Rajapaksa claimed that he had no contact with Mr. Sallay after leaving the position of Defence Secretary in 2015 and until he was elected President in 2019.

He added that Sallay had informed Channel 4 that he was not in Sri Lanka when the documentary alleged a meeting between the Major General and the suicide bombers.

Nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) linked to ISIS carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three Catholic churches and as many luxury hotels on April 21, 2019, killing nearly 270 people, including 11 Indians, and injuring over 500.

On Wednesday, the Minister of Labour and Foreign Employment, Manusha Nanayakkara, told Parliament that the Cabinet decided to appoint a special Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to probe into the allegations made by the UK’s Channel 4 programme.

The April 2019 Easter attacks led to a significant political change in Sri Lanka. It emerged that the then authorities had ignored prior intelligence on the attack by Indian intelligence agencies.

Then President Maithripala Sirisena and the entire top police brass were ordered to pay compensation by court during a hearing of fundamental rights petitions filed by the victims’ relatives.