Tuesday 8th October, 2024
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, addressing a group of Easter Sunday terror victims, their family members, Catholic priests including His Eminence Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, and others, at the Katuwapitiya Church, on Sunday, pledged to expedite investigations into the 2019 carnage and ensure that justice would be served fast. In saying so, he only repeated one of his election promises.
President Dissanayake should have addressed the specifics of some issues the Church had raised about the 2019 terror attacks, one being the fate that has befallen the reports of two vital probe committees appointed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Spokesman for the Colombo Archdiocese Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando, speaking at a discussion on the Easter Sunday terror attacks, recently, demanded to know what had become of the report of a committee President Wickremesinghe appointed to investigate some allegations that Channel 4 (UK) had levelled against Sri Lanka’s military intelligence in respect of the Easter bombings. The Church leaders should have requested President Dissanayake to make that report public.
What characterises the presidential probes in this country is lack of transparency on the part of the Presidents who order them. Committees and commissions are appointed to investigate issues of national importance, but not all their reports are released to the public, who have a right to know their findings. Sri Lankan Presidents have a remarkable ability to swallow committee reports whole!
Leader of Pivithuru Hela Urumaya Udaya Gammanpila, addressing the media yesterday called upon President Dissanayake to release the report of the committee appointed by President Wickremesinghe to investigate the Channel 4 allegation that Sri Lanka’s military intelligence was involved in the Easter Sunday attacks. Gammanpila also asked President Dissanayake to make public the report of the committee appointed by President Wickremesinghe to probe four specific issues concerning actions and responses of Sri Lanka’s military and intelligence officials in relation to the Easter Sunday bombings with special emphasis on the conduct of the head of the State Intelligence Service and the Chief of National Intelligence. That committee was headed by retired judge A. N. J de Alwis.
Gammanpila argued that on Sunday President Dissanayake would have been able to field questions from the victims of terror confidently at the Katuwapitiya Church and provided specific answers thereto if he had perused the aforesaid two reports, copies of which were available with Saman Ekanayake, who served as the Secretary to President Wickremesinghe, and the Attorney General. Whether President Dissanayake has read those reports, we do not know, but if he has not, it is high time he studied them and took action to make them accessible to the public.
There is no need to probe the Easter Sunday attacks all over again, and therefore it is hoped that no attempt will be made to reinvent the wheel. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry (COI) which investigated the 2019 carnage, has presented a corpus of information in its final report although it examined the alleged foreign involvement in the terror bombings perfunctorily. The COI findings could serve as the basis for a future investigation. If a new probe committee/commission seeks to begin from the beginning, investigations are likely to drag on until the cows come home. More than half a decade has already elapsed since the 2019 terror attacks.
The Catholic Church has said the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday carnage is the person who called himself ‘Abu Hind’ and his true identity is known to current Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security Ravi Seneviratne, and the members of the COI. Arresting the suspected terror mastermind will be half the battle in ascertaining who was actually behind the Easter Sunday carnage.
The Ministry of Public Security is now under Minister Vijitha Herath, who can ask Seneviratne, whom he handpicked as his ministry secretary, to reveal the true identity of Abu Hind, and President Dissanayake should make public the reports submitted by the Imam and Alwis committees.
Meanwhile, it is hoped that the NPP/JVP government, which has undertaken to have the Easter Sunday carnage probed thoroughly and serving justice expeditiously will not baulk at going the whole hog in view of the fact that Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim, father of two National Thowheed Jamath bombers, Mohamed Ibrahim Ilham Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim Insaf Ahmed, was a JVP National List nominee in the 2015 general election.
from The Island https://ift.tt/VaqFOeo
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