Colombo: Sri Lanka has filed 23,270 charges against 25 people in connection with the deadly 2019 Easter Sunday attacks that killed over 270 people, including 11 Indians, the President’s Office said on Wednesday.
The charges filed on Tuesday under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) include conspiracy to murder, aiding and abetting, collecting arms and ammunition and attempt to murder.
Nine suicide bombers belonging to the National Thowheed Jamaat (NTJ), a local Islamist extremist group affiliated with ISIS, carried out a series of blasts at three churches and several luxury hotels in Sri Lanka, killing and injuring 258 people, including 11 Indians. over 500 on Easter Sunday On 21st April 2019.
Sri Lankan police have arrested hundreds of suspects in connection with the suicide bombings.
The Attorney General’s department said the Chief Justice has been asked to appoint a special bench of the High Court for speedy trial of the cases.
The Buddhist-majority nation was about to mark a decade since ending the 37-year-long Tamil separatist war in May 2009, when suicide bombings rocked the country in 2019.
The attacks created a political storm as the then government, led by President Maithirpala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, was blamed for its inability to prevent deadly attacks despite providing prior intelligence on impending terrorist attacks.
During his tenure, Sirisena set up a presidential panel to investigate the attacks.
The panel said in its report that former President Sirisena and several other top defense officials, including former defense secretaries, former IGPs and intelligence chiefs, were guilty of ignoring prior intelligence. The panel’s report recommended criminal action against him.
The then police chief and top defense bureaucrat were both sacked and arrested for their inaction to stop the attacks. Last month, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, the head of the Catholic Church, urged the government to act against Wickremesinghe as prime minister for his failure to prevent attacks.
The cardinal said a presidential inquiry into the attacks launched by then-President Sirisena had found him guilty of his failure to stop the attacks.
Similarly, the investigation blamed Wickremesinghe for his lenient attitude towards the growing Islamic extremism in the island, the cardinal said.
The Church, while demanding accountability for the intelligence failure, expressed dissatisfaction over the lack of seriousness in the investigation to nab the culprits.
The government denies any slowdown in the investigation and says that around 700 people have been arrested and proper legal procedures are in place.
The blasts targeted St. Anthony’s Church in Colombo, St. Sebastian’s Church in the western coastal city of Negombo and a church in the eastern city of Batticaloa while Easter Sunday Mass was underway on April 21, 2019.
Three blasts were reported from three five-star hotels in Colombo – Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand and Kingsbury.
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