Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader Udaya Gammanpila has called for fresh legal action against two serving senior officials over the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, arguing that charges similar to or stronger than those that led to death sentences this week could be brought against them.
Speaking at a media briefing on Saturday, Gammanpila named Public Security Ministry Secretary Ravi Seneviratne and Criminal Investigation Department Director Shani Abeysekara. He said both should be charged with criminal negligence.
His argument turns on the timing of what each official knew. Gammanpila said former IGP Pujith Jayasundara and former Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando — both sentenced to death on Friday — did not have the earliest opportunity to learn of the attacks planned by Zahran Hashim. Seneviratne, then the DIG in charge of the CID, and Abeysekara, then CID Director, did have prior knowledge, he said, because their department was already investigating several crimes linked to Zahran.
He listed four of those investigations: the defacing of Buddha statues in Mawanella, the Wanathawilluwa explosives case, a bomb experiment in Batticaloa, and the killing of two police officers in Vavunathivu.
Information about Zahran’s planned attacks emerged during the interrogation of suspects in those cases, Gammanpila said, and the two officers failed to act on it.
Context
The claims follow Friday’s rulings by the Colombo Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar, which convicted Jayasundara and Fernando on 854 of 855 charges each by majority decision and sentenced both to death. The court found that the failure to act on intelligence about impending suicide bombings contributed to 268 deaths and 586 injuries.
Gammanpila’s allegations are the assertions of an opposition party leader and have not been tested in court. Neither Seneviratne nor Abeysekara has been charged in connection with the attacks, and neither had responded publicly by Saturday evening. LankaNewz found no comment from either official, or from the Attorney General’s Department, in reporting available at the time of writing.
