Additional Solicitor General Dileepa Peiris told the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday that Army intelligence officers had threatened a witness at his home after the last hearing and that a plan existed to plant weapons at the residence and arrest the individual through another law enforcement unit.
Making submissions in the case over alleged attempts to derail investigations into the 2018 Vavunathivu police killings and the 2019 Sainthamaruthu explosion, Peiris said several witnesses who had given statements to court were being pressured to withdraw their evidence. He pledged that all conspirators would be produced before court before the eighth anniversary of the Easter Sunday attacks in 2027.
The case was heard before Magistrate Isuru Neththikumara. Former State Intelligence Service director retired Major General Suresh Salley, the third suspect, was produced from remand custody by the Criminal Investigation Department.
Counsel for Salley rejected the allegations, arguing that several of the incidents in question occurred at a time when his client was not serving as intelligence chief or was outside the country. The magistrate extended Salley’s remand order and directed the CID to produce him at the next hearing, reminding counsel: “This is not a game — facts must be capable of proof beyond reasonable doubt.”
The allegations open a new dimension in the ongoing prosecution of Salley as a “key driving force” behind the Easter attacks, and run alongside his separate Court of Appeal writ petition against detention under the PTA. Peiris also made the earlier public attribution that Salley had been central to the conspiracy, the strongest prosecution statement yet in the case.
