Colombo, Apr 25: Sri Lanka’s former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday categorically rejected the allegations levelled against him by the head of the country’s Catholic church Cardinal Malcom Ranjith on the investigations into the deadly Easter Sunday terror attacks in 2019.
As many as 270 people, including 11 Indians, were killed on April 21, 2019, when nine suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) linked to ISIS carried out a series of blasts that tore through three Catholic churches and as many luxury hotels in Sri Lanka.
In the statement, Rajapaksa, 74, said the Easter Sunday attacks were perpetrated by a group of Islamic extremists.
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The highest investigative arm of the then government – the CID – had for several months before the attacks, been investigating the activities of the very same individuals and groups that carried out the suicide bombings but “failed to apprehend the terrorists before they struck”, news portal dailymirror.lk reported.
The public should take good note of the fact that Cardinal Ranjith “either glosses over the responsibility of, or expressly absolves the two parties mentioned above while continuing to relentlessly attack and criticise me over the Easter Sunday suicide bombings”, he said.
Rajapaksa is a former politician and military officer, who served as the President of Sri Lanka from November 2019 until his resignation in July 2022 due to months of public anger against the government as the country faced unprecedented economic turmoil.
The former president noted that at a recent media conference, Cardinal Ranjith alleged that the day after the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry on the Easter Sunday attacks was handed over to the former president, he had spoken to him over the phone and said that he had difficulties in implementing the recommendations in that report as it would entail the arrest of individuals and even the banning of organisations that were supportive of him.
In response, Rajapaksa said, “I categorically state that I did NOT speak to the Cardinal over the phone after the Presidential Commission report was submitted to me and tell him that the recommendations of the Presidential Commission could not be implemented because that would entail the arrest of people and even the banning of organisations allied with me.”
“It is a well-known fact that the Muslim community in general did not vote for me or support my candidacy at the Presidential election, so I cannot possibly have had any allies in any organisation that would need to be banned over complicity in the Easter Sunday attacks,” he said.
On Cardinal Ranjith’s allegations that he had delayed giving him a copy of the first volume of the Presidential Commission report and that he had not given him the remaining volumes, Rajapaksa denied the charges.
“The report of the Presidential Commission was handed over to me on February 1, 2021. Having studied it myself and referred it to the Attorney General, it was handed over to the Speaker of Parliament on February 23, 2021, and by March 1, 2021 copies had been given to the Venerable Mahanayaka Theras, the Cardinal and the Catholic Bishops. There was no delay in handing over the report to the Cardinal,” he said.
Rajapaksa also rebutted the allegations that he had transferred the CID officers investigating the Easter Sunday attacks and even imprisoned one such senior officer to sabotage the investigation.
Noting that the Cardinal has accused him of not having brought the perpetrators of the Easter Sunday bombings to justice, Rajapaksa said criminals have to be brought to justice not by politicians but by the police, the Attorney General’s Department and the Courts system working together.
That process is now ongoing and according to the media, 93 persons are now facing legal proceedings in court for offences relating to those suicide bombings,” he said. (PTI)
