The CID yesterday arrested former Military Intelligence Chief Major General (Retd.) Suresh Sallay in connection with the ongoing investigations into the Easter Sunday terror attacks (2019). Police Spokesman ASP F. U. Wootler told a hurriedly summoned media briefing that the arrest of Sallay was based on credible evidence. If so, the burden is on the police to prove their very serious charges against the war-time military intelligence officer who played a pivotal role in eliminating LTTE terror. Otherwise, they will have to face the consequences of their actions when their current political masters lose power. It amounts to a grave violation of fundamental rights to arrest people without sufficient grounds and hold them on remand for extended periods.
Everything possible must be done to trace the masterminds behind the Easter Sunday carnage and bring them to justice. However, efforts to ensure that justice is served must be devoid of partisan politics. The unprecedented politicisation of the CID under the current dispensation has severely undermined the integrity of the investigations into the Easter Sunday terror attacks. The CID is now under two former senior police officers, namely ex-SDIG Ravi Seneviratne and ex-SSP Shani Abeysekera. While in active service, they reduced the CID to a mere appendage of the UNP-led Yahapalana government and were accused of launching politically motivated probes and arresting the political opponents of that failed regime. They themselves have been accused of failing to act on warnings to prevent the 2019 terror attacks. Both Seneviratne and Abeysekera joined the Retired Police Collective of the JVP/NPP, which, after forming a government in 2024, brought them out of retirement and appointed them as Secretary to the Public Security Ministry and CID Director, respectively. They have to advance the incumbent government’s agenda as a quid pro quo for their elevation to the current positions.
Whenever the JVP-NPP government faces trouble on the political front, the police come to its aid, making high-profile arrests. So, the Opposition’s argument that the CID has arrested Sallay to distract public attention from the mega coal scam, which has sent the government reeling, is not without merit. Most of all, with the seventh anniversary of the Easter Sunday carnage only about two months away, the government needs to show that it is on course to fulfil its pledge to bring the terror masterminds to justice.
Curiously, one main aspect of the Easter Sunday carnage continues to be ignored; it is the alleged foreign involvement therein. Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, who was the Justice Minister in the Yahapalana government, taking part in a Sirasa TV programme in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election hinted at the possibility of some world powers having had a hand in the Easter Sunday bombings. He said that he had opposed the handing over of the strategically important Hambantota Port to China in 2017, warning the Yahapalana Cabinet that another world power would seek to take control of the Trincomalee harbour, the oil tank farm near it, and the Colombo Port, and that if Sri Lanka did not grant those demands, it would be plunged into a bloodbath and forced into submission. He said the Yahapalana administration had ignored his warning and gone ahead with the Hambantota Port deal, and three months later his prediction had come true; the US asked for the Trincomalee harbour with land around it, and India demanded that the Trinco oil tanks and the East Terminal of the Colombo Port be handed over to it. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had sought to grant those demands and presented a bill to Parliament to amend the Land Ordinance, Dr. Rajapakshe said, adding that he had moved the Supreme Court successfully, aborting the Yahapalana government’s bid to hand over the Trincomalee harbour and land. That administration’s attempt to grant India’s demand had come a cropper due to protests, and a few months later, the Easter Sunday attacks had happened, Dr. Rajapakshe said, drawing parallels between the destabilisation of Sri Lanka and that of Bangladesh.
If one reads between the lines, it may not be difficult to figure out what Dr. Rajapakshe chose to leave unsaid. He is not alone in claiming that there was a foreign hand in the 2019 terrorist bombings. Speaking at St. Sebastian’s Church, Katuwapitiya, on 21 July 2019, Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith flayed President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for having failed to resist the foreign conspiracy to destabilise the country.
Among the key witnesses who expressly testified before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) on the Easter Sunday terror attacks that there had been ‘an external hand or conspiracy behind the attacks’, were Cardinal Ranjith, Ravi Seneviratne, Shani Abeysekera and SDIG Nilantha Jayawardena, who said an Indian named Abu Hind ‘may have triggered the attacks’. Abu Hind was a character created by a section of a provincial Indian intelligence apparatus, and the intelligence the Director SIS received on 4th, 20th and 21st April, 2019 about the terror attacks was from this operation and the intelligence operative pretending to be one Abu Hind, according to an international terrorism expert who testified before the PCoI. In an interview with BBC in 2019, Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa declared that according to ‘investigative evidence’ he was privy to, India had been behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks. Curiously, the alleged foreign involvement in the Easter Sunday terror attacks has been ignored.
A thorough probe must be conducted into the alleged foreign involvement in the 2019 terror attacks, which may have been the beginning of a sinister campaign to make Sri Lanka’s economy scream in 2022, as we have argued in a previous comment.
