Sri Lankan Prez Dissanayake vows to expedite probe into 2019 Easter terror attacks

Colombo: Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Sunday vowed to expedite investigations into the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, assuring victims’ families that justice will be delivered.

In 2019, over 270 people, including 11 Indians, were killed as suicide bombers belonging to the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat linked to ISIS carried out a series of blasts that tore through three churches and as many luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on the Easter Sunday.

Although thousands of suspects have been held since then, no one has been tried in court to date.

During a visit to St. Sebastian's Church Katuwapitiya, President Dissanayake on Sunday "vowed to expedite investigations into the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, assuring victims' families that justice will be delivered," his office said.

The President "emphasised that such a tragedy must never happen again and stressed the importance of a fair, transparent investigation," it added.

The catholic church in the Buddhist-majority country remains unhappy over the investigations, which they have branded as a political cover-up to protect the powerful who could have masterminded the attack.

A day after he took oath as Sri Lanka's ninth president on September 23, Dissanayake said that he would reopen an investigation into the 2019 Easter attacks.

"The new president assured us that the truth on the Easter Sunday attacks would be brought to light," the head of the Catholic Church, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, said last month.

Ranjith has been critical of the investigation into the attacks.

Blaming both former presidents Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe for the incident, Ranjith slammed the investigation as a political cover-up of the attacks.

Former president Maithripala Sirisena had appointed a high-level probe committee following pressure from the church.

The probe found Sirisena guilty and ordered him to compensate SRs 100 million (INR 27,443,756) to relatives of the victims.

Then defence top brass was also found guilty of criminal negligence for ignoring prior intelligence warnings from India.