Ranil claims he was against banning Niqab for fear of losing intelligence on Islamic extremists

Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, yesterday, told the PCoI probing the Easter Sunday attacks that he had been reluctant to ban Muslim women from wearing face covers because he felt it would stop the Muslim community from providing information about Islamist extremism.

Wickremesinghe said that because of the 1983 communal riots, the Tamil people had not provided information about the LTTE initially.

It had taken more than two years to get Tamil people to provide information to the government and security forces, he said. A similar situation would have arisen if Niqabs and other face-covering clothes of Muslim women had been banned, Wickremesinghe said.

The Commissioners then asked Wickremesinghe why Sri Lankan intelligence services had failed to uncover information about the terror attacks in April 2019 if the Muslim community had provided information about Islamist extremism.

Wickremesinghe said that the Muslims had provided a lot of information about extremism to security forces. It was up to the security forces to act on the information, he said. The inability to ascertain information about the attack was a weakness of the intelligence services, Wickremesinghe said.

The Additional Solicitor General, who led the evidence, asked Wickremesinghe if there had been serious conflicts between those who supported him and those who were with former President Maithripala Sirisena. Wickremesinghe said there had been no serious conflicts. There had been some problems that all governments generally faced, he added.