Was Zahran only a pawn?

Friday 11th September, 2020

A very important statement SLMC leader and SJB MP Rauff Hakeem made, on Monday, before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) probing the Easter Sunday attacks, got buried in an avalanche of political news including that of the swearing in of a convict as an MP. What the SLMC leader said there should receive the attention of the government, the police, the security forces and the public. He said neither the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) or its putative head Zahran Hashim had had any links to the ISIS, and the Easter Sunday attacks had been masterminded by another force bent on destabilising the country. He offered to name that force in camera.

The task of inquiring into Hakeem’s claim is best left to the learned commissioners, but even the laymen capable of logical thinking can see that there is a lot more to the Easter Sunday bombings than meets the eye. They are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, one may say with apologies to Winston Churchill. There are many unanswered questions about those incidents.

It has now become patently clear that the NTJ under Zahran’s leadership, made grand preparations for a sustained terror campaign. It conducted many lectures to indoctrinate schoolchildren, among others, set up training centres and stockpiled arms, ammunition and explosives. It would not have brainwashed children and trained them in weapon handling if it had not had a long-term strategy. If it had had any ISIS links, and the Easter Sunday carnage had been its goal, it could have easily had its bombers trained overseas and smuggled in about 10 suicide jackets.

Above all, nowhere in the world has a terrorist leader ever carried out a suicide attack after putting in place a formidable terror network. Senior DIG Rohan Silva, who is currently in charge of the Southern Province and was the head of the Presidential Security Division at the time of the Easter Sunday attacks, revealed before the Easter Sunday PCoI, recently, that the TNJ had planned a second wave of terror. He supported his claim with facts, some of which became known to the public in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday carnage. If so, why on earth did Zahran kill himself in the first wave of terror itself without waiting to carry out the second? Only a fool would have done so. Zahran was no fool.

Zahran was widely thought to be the mastermind of the Easter attacks, but someone else apparently handled him and made him take part in the first wave of suicide attacks. The ISIS took a couple of days to claim responsibility for the Easter Sunday attacks although it usually does so immediately after terror strikes.

One cannot but agree with Hakeem that the goal of the mastermind/s of the Easter bombing was to destabilise the country. They achieved their goal, he has told the PCoI. He is not alone in making that assertion. Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith has also said there was a foreign conspiracy behind the Easter Sunday attacks. He did not mince his words when he said, addressing a congregation, on 21 July 2019, at the Katuwapitya St. Sebastian’s Church, which was one of the NTJ targets, that some international conspirator had used several ‘misguided Muslim’ youth to unleash terror and the real masterminds of the bombings had not been found. He would not have reached that conclusion without irrefutable evidence.

The public has a right to all information about the perpetrators of the Easter Sunday carnage. It would have been better if Hakeem had named those who, in his opinion, are responsible for the attacks, but he must be having reasons for not doing so. Most of all, national security will be in jeopardy until the actual powers behind the Easter terror strikes are found out.