The first accused in the Easter Sunday attacks case, Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamed Naufer — widely known as Naufer Moulavi — has rejected every charge brought against him, delivering a defence statement from the dock before the Colombo Trial-at-Bar on Monday, August 17.
Naufer addressed the three-judge bench for close to two hours. “I have been accused in this case of acting together with nine individuals, including Zaharan, Wasim, Insaf, Ilham and other suicide bombers… In relation to these allegations, 940 charges have been filed against me. I reject all of these charges,” he told court, according to News 1st.
He also challenged the confession recorded by the Criminal Investigation Department after his arrest. Naufer said statements were taken from him in a different form and his signature obtained afterwards on documents presented as printed copies, and alleged he was assaulted in CID custody, a complaint he said he raised when first produced before the Judicial Medical Officer. “It was not a voluntary confession,” he said.
Naufer told the bench that Zahran Hashim’s National Thowheed Jamaath had been registered at the Kattankudy Divisional Secretariat, and alleged that attacks on Muslim-owned property and places of worship during 2015 and 2016 went unchecked by the intelligence services. He said he had no relationship with Zahran between 2007 and 2017, and knew him only because Zahran had married a relative.
The defence phase opened after prosecutors closed their case. The Sunday Times reported that the bench — Judges Navaratne Marasinghe (President), Sujeewa Nissanka and Ramanathan Kannan — found grounds to call evidence from all 24 accused, who face 23,270 charges. Around 1,500 witnesses testified across 547 days of prosecution evidence over five years, with 2,076 items produced in court. The sixth accused, Mohamed Rizwan, told the bench he would remain silent.
More than 260 people were killed in the April 2019 bombings of churches and hotels.
