Bombings and bigger picture

Tuesday 12th September, 2023

Even Channel 4 may not have expected its recent programme on the Easter Sunday terrorist bombings to cause such a stir in Sri Lanka. Anyone familiar with western media tropes could see the butler-did-it ending of the much-advertised exposé coming, miles away. Curiously, even those who used to brand Channel 4 as a hireling of anti-sri Lankan forces have chosen to buy into its claims at issue, albeit selectively, in a bid to gain political mileage.

Channel 4 has not made any revelation as such about the Easter Sunday carnage. It has only recycled what is already known with some claims of a Sri Lankan asylum seeker thrown in to give its programme an investigative flavour. It has however succeeded in making its bete noire, the Rajapaksa family, squirm again, and giving a fillip to the ongoing campaign for an international probe into the Easter Sunday attacks. The Catholic Church, and Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa are prominent among those who are calling for an international investigation.

He that hath an ill name is said to be half-hanged. The Rajapaksas have earned notoriety for covering up numerous crimes. So, it is only natural that they stand accused of having had a hand in the Easter Sunday attacks, which catapulted national security to the centre stage of politics again, much to their advantage ahead of the last presidential election. Most of all, the Rajapaksas reneged on their pledge to have the Easter Sunday attacks thoroughly investigated. But it will be a mistake for those who are seeking justice to take Channel 4 claims as the truth, and allow some vital aspects of the 2019 carnage to go uninvestigated. The bigger picture must not be overlooked.

The call for a probe into the alleged involvement of the Rajapaksas in the Easter Sunday bombings should be heeded, but investigations must not be limited to that aspect of the issue if the truth is to be uncovered. There are some questions that warrant answers. Did Zahran have a handler who manipulated and misled the NTJ (National Thowheed Jamath)? If so, whose interests did he seek to further? Did he work for the Rajapaksas or some foreign powers seeking to destabilise Sri Lanka to further their geopolitical interests? The focus of those who are demanding a fresh probe into the Easter Sunday carnage is on the Rajapaksa family although Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith himself has said there was an external hand in the terror attacks.

As we have pointed out in a previous comment, some key witnesses who testified before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), which probed the Easter Sunday attacks, insisted that there had been ‘an external hand or conspiracy behind the attacks’. They are Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, former President Maithripala Sirisena, former Minister Rauf Hakeem, former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen, former Governor Azath Salley, former SJB MP Mujibur Rahman, former SIS Director SDIG Nilantha Jayawardena, former STF Commandant M. R. Latheef, former Chief of Defence Staff Ravindra Wijegunaratne, former SDIG (CID) Ravi Seneviratne and former CID Director Shani Abeysekera, whom Opposition Leader Premadasa considers the best person to head a fresh probe into the Easter Sunday attacks. The PCoI has dismissed their statements as mere ipse dixits (assertions made but not proven), but recommended that certain identified parties be further investigated. This recommendation has gone unimplemented.

The question is whether it will be possible to conduct an international investigation free from external pressure into the Easter Sunday attacks to get at the truth, given the alleged foreign involvement in the carnage. Senior DIG Jayawardena told PCoI that an Indian named Abu Hind ‘may have triggered the attacks’. According to the PCoI report, an ‘international expert on terrorism who testified in camera said, “Abu Hind was a character created by a section of a provincial Indian intelligence apparatus, and the intelligence that the Director SIS received on the 4th, 20th and 21st April 2019 was from this operation and the intelligence operative pretending to be one Abu Hind. Operatives of this outfit operate in social media pretending to be Islamic State figures. They are trained to run virtual personae.” The report goes on to say, “The testimony was that Zahran believed Abu Hind was the Islamic State regional representative. Abu Hind was in touch with both Zahran and his brother, Rilwan, and had spoken to Naufer. This part of the evidence is confirmed by the testimony of Hadiya [Zahran’s wife].”

The need for a high-level probe to ascertain whether an external force was behind the Easter Sunday carnage cannot be overstated.