A three-judge Trial-at-Bar of the Colombo High Court on Wednesday sentenced two men to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment over the illegal possession and storage of explosives at Wanathawilluwa, Puttalam, in 2018, NewsFirst and the Daily Mirror reported.
The bench of Judges Lal Ranasinghe Bandara, Rashmi Singappuli and Nayomi Wickramasekara ordered that time already served in detention and remand custody be deducted from the sentences.
The two are Abu Hanifa Mohamed Musif, the first accused, and Ameer Hamza Mohamed Hamas, the second. Both pleaded guilty. NewsFirst reports the pleas were entered at proceedings on 28 September, with Wednesday’s sitting called for sentencing.
The 2018 seizure
The case comes out of a Criminal Investigation Department operation in 2018, in which officers recovered a stock of nitrate, 12 live rounds of ammunition, a firearm, and quantities of nitric acid and urea that could be used to manufacture explosives. The Daily Mirror places the site at the Lastery Estate in Wanathawilluwa.
The Attorney General filed 14 indictments against six accused: Musif, Hamas, Mohamed Sarifu Adam Lebbe, Mohamed Ibrahim Sadik Abdullah, Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamed Naufar and Mohamed Rameesh Mohamed Sajid.
The Easter Sunday connection — reported by one outlet, not the other
The two filings differ on the most consequential point. The Daily Mirror describes the stockpile as held “in connection with Muslim extremists including Zahran Hashim” — the lead attacker in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings. NewsFirst’s account makes no mention of Zahran or of the Easter attacks at all, and presents the case purely as an explosives-possession prosecution.
The Daily Mirror’s framing is consistent with how the case has been handled in court. When the bench ordered daily hearings from 5 October, Hiru News reported that investigators had linked the Wanathawilluwa site to Zahran Hashim and other religious extremists, and that four of the six accused were already serving prison terms after being convicted in the main Easter Sunday trial on 22 September.
That last point matters for reading Wednesday’s sentences. The men sentenced on Wednesday are the two accused in this case who were not already convicted in the Easter trial; the sentences do not represent the disposal of the whole indictment.
Two things worth noting on the record
The spelling of the first accused’s name varies. NewsFirst and the Daily Mirror both give Musif; Hiru’s earlier filing rendered it Abu Haneefa Mohamed Musable. Both the Daily Mirror and the earlier Hiru report give the alias as Abu Dahida. The Daily Mirror writes the second accused as Amir Hamza, NewsFirst as Ameer Hamza. These are transliteration variants of the same two names, not different people.
The date of the guilty pleas is attributed, not confirmed. NewsFirst places them at the 28 September sitting. LankaNewz’s own coverage of that sitting, sourced to Hiru, described it as a procedural hearing dealing with undelivered case documents and the scheduling of daily hearings, and did not report any plea being entered. The two accounts are not necessarily in conflict — Hiru led on the procedural issue — but the plea date rests on NewsFirst alone.
Not reported
Neither filing says what happened to the other four accused in this case, whether the remaining indictments were withdrawn, disposed of or remain live, or how much time the two convicts had already served and therefore how much of the 10 years remains. Neither gives the charges the two pleaded guilty to out of the 14 filed, or why the case took eight years to reach sentencing. Neither reports submissions in mitigation, any statement from the Attorney General’s Department, or whether an appeal is contemplated.
Sources: NewsFirst, Daily Mirror.
