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In a landmark judgement, a three-member committee, headed by retired High Court Judge Aadambaragay Nilanthi Jayaki de Alwis, claimed that information of the Easter Sunday bombings, which killed over 280 people, had not reached former Sri Lankan president Mathiripala Sirisena prior to the attack.
The judgement is sharp disagreement with a prior judgement from Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court which fined the former president 100 million rupees for his failure to prevent the attack. The court’s judgement was premised on an understanding that he was alerted to intelligence detailing the impending bombing
However, the committee did not give the former president a clean record. In discussing his culpability, they note that considering that matter was “beyond their mandate” but stressed that “his actions overall contributed to the deterioration of security in the country, as reflected in the highly irregular proceedings of the National Security Council.
The committee also does not comment on the conduct of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), which has been accused of involvement in the Easter Sunday bombings.
Economy Next summarises the committee’s 47-page report noting that the “thrust of the report is to apportion blame to [Ravi] Seneviratne and his main lieutenant, Shani Abeysekera, the key detective who investigated corruption and murder allegations relating to members of the Rajapaksa family”. Seneviratne had served, at the time of the attack, as Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department’s Deputy Inspector General of Police.
The committee’s report was submitted to former president Wickremesinghe three days ahead of the presidential election that saw victory of Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The report was later leaked by former MP Udaya Gammanpila, who has since demanded that Seneviratne be removed from his current position as Secretary of the Ministry of Public Security.
Sri Lanka’s Public Security Minister Vijitha Herath has rejected the committee’s findings claiming that they are “politically motivated”. He questioned de Alwis’s character highlighting that she had been disciplined for corruption two years after joining the judiciary as a lower court magistrate.
The Catholic Church has also voiced their disapproval of the report and called on Gammanpila to release a report from a committee he was on that was set up to examine the recommendations of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCol) into the Easter Sunday attack.
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