Who handled Zahran?

Monday 23rd November 2020

Investigations are still being conducted to ascertain whose lapses helped the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) carry out the Eastern Sunday terror attacks with ease. All indications are that they will go on until the cows come home. What we have witnessed all these months is a shameful blame game. Some politicians, former defence officials and police officers have been trying to absolve themselves of criminal culpability for failure to prevent the Easter Sunday carnage though they had been warned of possible terror strikes, days, if not weeks, in advance. They were as thick as thieves during the early days of the yahapalana rule, but they have now fallen out and are accusing one another. All those who failed to prevent the terrorist attacks, despite intelligence warnings, must be prosecuted. But that alone will not help ensure national security, for it is believed that Zahran Hashim, who led the NTJ and died in a suicide bomb attack, was not the real mastermind of the carnage. A prerequisite for ensuring national security is to find out who handled Zahran.

Former SDIG Ravi Seneviratne, who was in charge of the CID, has told the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), probing the Easter Sunday attacks that the person who got Zahran to launch the suicide attacks has to be traced if threats to national security are to be neutralised effectively. He, however, is not alone in arguing that Zahran had a handler.

Testifying before the PCoI, intelligence bigwigs who were in service at the time of the Easter Sunday attacks, have said the NTJ was planning a second wave of attacks. In July 2020, a senior intelligence officer, whose identity was not divulged, said the NTJ had planned to attack the Kandy Dalada Perahera, in 2019. No less a person than former Director of State Intelligence Service, SDID Nilantha Jayawardena, has told the PCoI that the real mastermind of the Easter Sunday bombings was not Zahran, but his mentor, Naufer Moulavi, who has been living in Qatar for several years and is known to have various foreign links.

One may argue that the police as well as state intelligence officials, having failed to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks, are now trying to have the public believe that they succeeded in thwarting a second wave of terror, which would have been far worse than the first one. But if their claim that Zahran had planned a second wave of attacks is true, then the question is why he opted to die in the first wave. If he had been the real mastermind of the Easter Sunday attacks, he would not have blown himself up in the first wave of bombings because he would not have been unaware that his death would render his outfit rudderless and too demoralised to carry out attacks ever again. He had seen that following Prabhakaran’s death, the LTTE suicide cadres who survived the war did not carry out any attacks.

SLMC leader and former Minister of Justice Rauf Hakeem has told the PCoI that the mastermind of the Easter Sunday attacks was a different group that wanted to destabilise the country, and they achieved their objective. Insisting that Zahran and the NTJ had been used as pawns by that group, he said he would name the outfit, in camera. In fact, he is reported to have done so. The public has a right to know what that group is.

One can only hope that a separate probe will be launched to find out who handled Zahran and whether there was a foreign hand in the attacks, as claimed in some quarters. Whoever handled Zahran, the fact remains that all those who had links to the NTJ, which carried out the terror attacks, must be brought to justice. Unfortunately, dirty politics has taken precedence over the legal process; under the incumbent government, which came to power, promising tough action against the backers of the NTJ, some suspects are receiving kid-glove treatment despite incriminating evidence against them.