The arithmetic behind the Easter Sunday sentences has now been published, along with the submissions both sides made before the Colombo High Court Trial-at-Bar passed them.
Our report on the sentencing noted that no outlet had explained which charges each defendant was convicted on. The Daily Mirror’s full court report supplies the structure.
Twenty years at a time
The court imposed separate sentences for each incident and each charge, the Daily Mirror reported.
For the attack on St. Anthony’s Church, Kochchikade, the convicted were sentenced to 20 years for conspiring to carry out the bombing, 20 years in respect of those killed, and 20 years in respect of those injured. Those three terms run concurrently with one another.
The same 20-year pattern was applied to the attacks on St. Sebastian’s Church, Katuwapitiya, the Shangri-La Hotel, the Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Zion Church, Batticaloa, and the Tropical Inn, Dehiwala, with a further set of terms for the second bombing at the Shangri-La.
The stacking happens between incidents, not within them: sentences for each separate incident begin only after the sentence for the preceding incident has been completed. Run consecutively across eight attacks, the 20-year units produce the headline totals. The first accused, Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamed Naufer alias Naufer Moulavi, also drew 20 years on each of two individual charges, reaching 220 years in all.
The per-defendant table, confirmed
The Daily Mirror’s breakdown by accused number reconciles exactly with the table we published on 22 September:
| Accused | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1, 9, 10, 16, 18 | 220 years each |
| 2, 3, 4, 5 | 240 years each |
| 6, 7, 11, 15, 19 | 200 years each |
| 8 | 260 years |
That is five at 220, four at 240, five at 200 and one at 260 — fifteen men. AP’s count differs slightly, giving four at 220 and three at 240, which totals thirteen rather than fifteen. The Daily Mirror’s list, which names the accused by number, is the one that closes.
Property of those convicted under the relevant provisions is forfeited to the State under Section 4 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and the order bars any transfer or sale from the date the sentence takes effect.
What the prosecution said
Senior Additional Solicitor General Haripriya Jayasundara, PC — appearing with State Counsel Sajith Bandara and Additional Solicitor General Sudarshana de Silva — asked the court to sentence in a way that would serve as an example to anyone holding extremist views.
“During this trial, I felt as though I wished the hands of the clock would turn faster. That is how distressing the examination of this evidence was.”
She described worshippers praying on Easter Sunday and diners in hotels who had done nothing to anyone, and said that those left completely disabled are alive but “like dead people.”
“None of them have any regret. They are still holding on to their ideology.”
She cited Supreme Court authority including Sumandiran v. Harsha Ilupitiya, and the 1996 Central Bank bombing case, in which Prabhakaran was sentenced to 200 years — a judgment delivered in 2002, when the counsel appearing for the Attorney General’s Department was Navaratne Marasinghe, now the president judge of this Trial-at-Bar. She asked that sentences here be stacked the same way, and they were.
AP reported that the prosecution told the court the defendants were part of a well-planned attack intended to kill Christian worshippers and tourists, and pointed to a video recorded the day before the bombings in which attackers with covered faces pledged allegiance to then-Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Daily Mirror adds that the video, held on a pen drive, was recorded in the Mount Lavinia area and showed one man holding a T-56 rifle and another a sword, with an ISIS flag present.
What the defence said
Counsel Anil Maddumage, for accused 2, 7, 8, 10, 15, 18 and 19, asked for leniency, telling the court his clients had already spent about seven and a half years in prison.
“We also do not want something like what happened on April 21, 2019, to happen again.”
Naufer Moulavi declined to ask for anything at all. According to the teachings of Islam it was not appropriate to make requests of authorities, he said, and he would accept whatever the court imposed. AP records his words as: “According to Islam, no religious leader should plead with (secular) authorities over any matter.”
Seven defendants without lawyers spoke for themselves, AP reported. One, Mohamed Ibrahim Saadiq Abdulla, told the court: “What I did or didn’t do only God and I know.” The sixth accused had already told the bench the real culprits remain free.
The scale of the case
Case No. TAB 2972/21 opened on 10 October 2023 and concluded on 24 August this year. The indictment ran to nine volumes and 8,900 pages against 25 accused, and the prosecution produced 2,076 productions, including explosives, chemicals used to make them, swords and firearms.
Delivering judgment, Judge Marasinghe held that a conspiracy does not require everyone involved to be physically present together or in direct contact, that an agreement to commit an offence may be express or implied, and that people who joined at different stages can still be parties to the same conspiracy.
A note on one name
The Daily Mirror gives the accused who died during proceedings as Yasin Bawa Abdul Rauf; NewsFirst rendered it Yaseem Bawa Abdul Rauff in the list of all defendants. These are transliteration variants of one name.
Not reported
Neither source states how the 20-year units map onto each individual defendant beyond the totals, nor which of the eight incidents each convicted man was found to have joined. The dispute over whether Husainul Rizvi Khalid Sameer was convicted or acquitted remains unresolved, and no written order has been published.
