Prosecutors told the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday that a military intelligence informant had been supplying information about Zahran Hashim as early as 2018, and that the intelligence was never passed to the investigators who could have acted on it, NewsFirst reported.
Additional Solicitor General Dileepa Peiris set out what investigators describe as a pattern of intelligence failures, suppressed warnings and unexplained decisions in the months before the April 2019 attacks, which killed 278 people and injured more than 500.
The informant and the chain that stopped
The informant, known as “Thambiyan”, is a former LTTE Sea Tiger operative who later worked with Indian intelligence before returning to Sri Lanka, the court was told.
His reporting on Zahran allegedly travelled a fixed route: to an officer named Suranga, then to Colonel Ranawera, who was expected to relay it to the then Director of Military Intelligence, Chula Kodituwakku. Prosecutors allege that despite the detail held, it was not shared with investigators in time.
The same informant had identified Zahran and his associates as responsible for the murder of two police officers at Vavunathivu, the ASG said — while efforts were allegedly made to present the killings as an LTTE operation and to implicate a former LTTE member named Ajanthan.
The timing is the sharpest allegation of the day. An officer in charge of the Third Military Intelligence Corps told the CID that Zahran’s group was behind the Vavunathivu murders only nine days before the Easter attacks. The informant, prosecutors said, had supplied that same conclusion almost immediately after the killings.
That gap, the ASG argued, raises the suspicion that some intelligence officers took part in a wider conspiracy.
Sea routes, protection and money
The prosecution also told court that Zahran had travelled to India several times by sea from Mannar, and that on returning he received political protection allegedly linked to former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen.
Financing for those trips allegedly came from a businessman named Alavudeen — identified in court as the father-in-law of Inshaf, one of the suicide bombers who struck the Shangri-La hotel.
Court was further told that Inshaf’s wife, detained and questioned by the CID after the attacks, was released before her detention orders expired, following the change of government and the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Alavudeen, prosecutors said, had a leading role in managing Rajapaksa’s campaign in the Mannar area.
A travel ban, and two lists with Zahran’s name on them
The court approved the ASG’s application for a travel ban on former Police Inspector Konara Bandara, who had served in the police unit investigating extremist activity in the public sector.
During his time at the State Intelligence Service, Bandara compiled two watch lists — one of 94 names, the other of 126. Both, prosecutors said, contained Zahran Hashim, several of the Easter suicide bombers, and other individuals now on trial before the Colombo High Court.
On 3 April 2019, foreign intelligence on Zahran was passed by then SIS Director Nilantha Jayawardena to Bandara for follow-up. Bandara instead travelled to Kattankudy and met Shayni Moulavi, younger brother of Zahran and Rilwan — whose own name was reportedly on one of the lists. No arrest followed.
Had Shayni Moulavi been arrested then, the ASG argued, investigators might have reached Zahran before the attacks. Whether that meeting itself forms part of a conspiracy is now under examination.
Statements sought from MPs
Investigators intend to record statements from several Members of Parliament, including the Leader of the Opposition, over public remarks made about Suresh Salley and the Easter investigations.
Peiris stressed that Salley had not been arrested on any personal decision by prosecutors or the CID — the allegations against him, he said, were first raised publicly by opposition figures in Parliament, and investigators now want those statements on record.
The defence: allegations, not evidence
Appearing for Salley, President’s Counsel Shavindra Fernando rejected the submissions outright. The claims placed before court were allegations rather than evidence, he argued, and material in B Reports should not be treated as established fact. He said he would not answer each accusation individually because none of it amounted to evidence before the court.
Nothing put to court on Tuesday is a finding. No person named has been convicted in connection with the allegations described, and Bathiudeen was released from an earlier Easter-related case on the Attorney General’s advice.
Proceedings were postponed to 22 September — the same date on which the Director of the National Hospital has been ordered to appear and explain why Salley’s medical reports were never filed.
Context
Salley was named by the prosecution as a “key driving force” behind the attacks in April. Two former police chiefs, Pujith Jayasundara and Hemasiri Fernando, were sentenced to death in July over failures to act on prior warnings. A travel ban was imposed on Gotabaya Rajapaksa in June.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not give Konara Bandara’s full name or current status, does not say whether Suranga, Colonel Ranawera or Chula Kodituwakku are suspects, and does not name the Leader of the Opposition among the MPs whose statements are sought. It does not say what became of the Vavunathivu prosecution against Ajanthan, whether Alavudeen or Shayni Moulavi has been questioned, or what the “two significant new pieces of evidence” are said to consist of beyond the informant’s account. No response from any person named is recorded.
No other verified newsroom had filed this account of Tuesday’s submissions at the time of writing; Ada Derana carried the separate hospital-director order from the same sitting.
Update (September 16): a second newsroom confirms the nine-day warning, and names the officer
Hiru News filed its own account of Tuesday’s proceedings a day later, confirming the central disclosure and adding two details NewsFirst did not carry.
The officer is named. The intelligence officer who told the CID that Zahran and his associates were responsible for the Vavunathivu killings was Colonel Maddumage, who was responsible for the Third Intelligence Battalion. NewsFirst had identified him only by his command. Hiru refers to the unit as the Third Intelligence Battalion where NewsFirst calls it the Third Military Intelligence Corps; neither outlet reconciles the two descriptions.
Who was running the CID at the time. Hiru reports that when that warning was passed, the Criminal Investigation Department was headed by Ravi Seneviratne, with Shani Abeysekara serving as its Director. Neither man is accused of anything in the submissions, and the report does not say what the CID did with the information. Both were awarded compensation by the Supreme Court a day earlier in an unrelated fundamental rights case.
Hiru also sharpens what the disclosure does and does not establish. The question, it reports, is not whether intelligence agencies held information on Zahran, or whether every initial informant report could be treated as verified intelligence — but that information specifically linking Zahran and his associates to the Vavunathivu killings reached the country’s principal criminal investigative agency nine days before the attacks. The informant, the court heard, had supplied that conclusion as early as the day after the Vavunathivu killings, after which it moved through the military intelligence system while its reliability was assessed.
Hiru attributes its report to Sri Lanka Guardian. Its account is otherwise consistent with NewsFirst’s on the date, the court, the Additional Solicitor General and the substance of the disclosure.
Nothing in the update is a finding of fact. The submissions remain the prosecution’s case, contested by the defence as allegation rather than evidence, and proceedings stand postponed to 22 September.
