Sri Lanka’s Trial-at-Bar sentenced the 15 men convicted over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings to 220 years of rigorous imprisonment each late on Tuesday night, and ordered that every property they own be confiscated by the State.
The sentences were handed down hours after the same three-judge bench convicted 15 of the 24 accused and acquitted nine, closing the main conspiracy trial arising from the attacks on churches and hotels that killed more than 260 people.
Daily Mirror reported that the convictions rest on 23,270 charges, including conspiring to carry out suicide attacks on hotels, churches and other locations in Colombo and several other areas, and providing assistance and support for them.
Hiru News reported that the court additionally ordered the defendants’ fingerprints to be taken. The bench comprised Navaratne Marasinghe as president judge, sitting with Sujeewa Nissanka and Ramanathan Kannan.
Two accounts of the sentence
Daily Mirror, Hiru and NewsFirst’s first report all put the sentence at a flat 220 years for each of the 15 men.
NewsFirst later filed an update giving a varied breakdown instead: one convict sentenced to 260 years, four to 240 years, five to 220 years and five to 200 years. That division accounts for all 15.
No outlet has yet reconciled the two figures, and the court has not published a written sentencing order. LankaNewz will update this article when the per-defendant terms are confirmed.
Mohamed Naufar Maulavi, named by prosecutors as the ideological organiser of the attacks, was among those convicted. The full list of those convicted and acquitted was published earlier on Tuesday.
