Sri Lankan Muslims ‘not responsible for Easter attack’
Sun 27 October 2019:
Political analysts and Muslim leaders said here on Saturday that an investigation into the Easter Sunday bomb blasts in Sri Lanka blamed the government, not the Muslim community, for the attack. The attack on April 21, carried out by eight suicide bombers, killed 269 people and injured about 500 in three churches and four hotels across the island nation.
The findings from the report submitted by the parliamentary select committee said that former head of the state intelligence service, Nilantha Jayawardena, had received information about possible attacks as early as April 4, 17 days before the suicide bombings took place, but was slow to act on it.
The committee said that if the intelligence officials had been briefed about the threat from Zahran on April 9, “steps may have been taken to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks.”
The report said that the extremist preacher Mohamed Zahran, the alleged ringleader of the attacks, who was one of the eight suicide bombers, had been on the radar from 2015 and an arrest warrant had been issued for him in March 2017.
International Human Rights Activist, Muheed Jeeran, based in Colombo, said that the proceedings of the parliamentary select committee and its report was only a “blame game” conducted by the government.
He said that the report should have looked into the causes that led to the attacks and highlighted the motives of the extremist bombers.
“Instead, some innocent Muslims who are not involved in the attacks are still behind bars without any proper court proceedings,” he said.
BACKGROUND
The attack on April 21, carried out by eight suicide bombers, killed 269 people and injured about 500 in three churches and four hotels across the island nation.
Former Western Province Governor and National Unity Alliance Leader Azath Salley told Arab News that he was happy the Muslim community in Sri Lanka was not blamed for the attacks.
Quoting Archibishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, he said that some external forces had been instrumental in the bombings and expressed hope that the cardinal would reveal the real people behind the attacks who are currently living abroad.
“It was very unfortunate a good number of Muslim scholars were arrested during the investigations,” he said.
Leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress N.M. Ameen said that the report has clearly explained that a handful of misguided Muslim youths have been used for the attacks due to extremist Buddhist activities.
“We are really happy about the report which has really identified the reasons for the attacks and has accused the government’s failure to take swift action,” Ameen said.
The committee said that an open row between the president, Maithripala Sirisena, and the prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and the ensuing political crisis, also contributed to the security failures.
The report said that Sirisena failed on “numerous occasions to give leadership and also actively undermined government and systems, including having ad-hoc national security council meetings and leaving out key individuals from meetings.”
-arabnews
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