Probes: More queries than answers

Friday 26th February, 2021

The Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) that probed the Easter Sunday carnage can easily be bracketed with the PCoI on the Treasury bond scams; both have not dug deep enough to reveal the masterminds of the crimes they were tasked with investigating. Obviously, Hashim Zahran, described as the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) leader was only one of the attackers. The NTJ stockpiled explosives, arms and ammunition sufficient for many attacks. It had a long-term strategy; it brainwashed children and conducted training and indoctrination programmes. It need not have done so if its goal had been to carry out eight attacks in a single day. Why should an outfit train scores of cadres when the need is only for eight persons to blow themselves up? If Zahran had had ISIS links, as claimed in some quarters, he could have easily smuggled in eight foreign Jihadists to carry out the Easter Sunday attacks. Why should an organisation procure huge amounts of explosives if the need is only for eight explosive-laden backpacks? The NTJ could have smuggled in suicide jackets or bought them from the former Tigers.

There is reason to believe that Zahran had a handler, who must be identified and dealt with. It is also possible that Zahran’s handler also had a handler, perhaps from a foreign spy agency bent on destabilising this country. Zahran’s base was in the Eastern Province, and he had been making preparations for a string of terror attacks spread over a long period of time, especially in that part of the country. He tried his hands at launching attacks against the state; he and his associates dipped their toes successfully by executing two policemen, at Vavunativu in 2018; they got away with the crime, which the CID wrongly blamed on the LTTE rump. Those who were in charge of national security at that time were intellectually challenged, and there was no need for Zahran to resort to suicide attacks on 21 April 2019; he could have attacked the targets without losing any of his cadres. What prompted him to carry out terror attacks away from the East, his stronghold? If he had been the leader of the terrorist movement, he would have known that his death would mark the end of it; he had planned a second wave of attacks, the PCoI was told. Why on earth did he choose to perish in the first wave itself? These questions have gone unanswered.

That the ISIS had the Easter Sunday attacks carried out is a tall story. They would have claimed responsibility for the explosions even before the dust settled on the blast sites if they had been behind them; they took time to do so. The real mastermind/s of the Easter Sunday attacks must be identified if security threats to Sri Lanka are to be obviated. So long as they are at large, threats will persist.

Among those who told the PCoI, in no uncertain terms, that there had been a hidden hand behind the TNJ are former President Maithripala Sirisena, SLMC leader and SJB MP Rauff Hakeem and former CID SDIG Ravi Seneviratne. His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith also said there had been a foreign conspiracy behind the terror attacks to destabilise the country. He must be privy to some information that others are not. So, no investigation that has ignored this vital aspect of the terror attacks can be considered complete.

In a previous editorial comment (28/01), we said we hoped the PCoI report would clear doubts as regards the following: why did the NTJ use two bombers for the suicide attacks at Shangri-La, Colombo? One of them was Zahran himself. He could have got the other bomber to take another target. Why didn’t he do so? Did his handler seek to send any message to the world through the Shangri-La attack? If so, what was it? Was Zahran duped into communicating with and taking orders from a fake ISIS created by a powerful spy agency? Is there any truth in the media reports that the police were denied access to a luxury hotel room, where explosive detection canines led them to, following the Easter Sunday bombings? The PCoI probe has not yielded answers to these questions.

There is a need for another commission to peruse the information the Easter Sunday PCoI gathered and conduct a fresh probe into the terror attacks from other angles which have not received due attention.