Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara has rejected viral social-media claims that he had represented National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) suicide bomber Mohamed Zahran Hashim, who carried out the Shangri-La hotel attack in the April 2019 Easter Sunday carnage. The attorney-at-law minister said those “unsettled by the ongoing investigations” into the bombings were propagating lies and that he was being targeted in an obvious bid to undermine the investigations.
Nanayakkara made the comments responding to a query from The Island. The minister had been accused on social media of taking Zahran Hashim from Colombo to Saithamaruthu in the Eastern Province and subsequently suppressing related documents. He challenged accusers to “produce whatever evidence available to substantiate their claims or shut up till those who masterminded the 2019 attacks were brought before court of law”, the paper reported.
The minister linked the timing of the campaign against him to the recent surge of protest activity around the detention of former State Intelligence Service chief Maj. Gen. (retd.) Suresh Sallay under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Nanayakkara alleged that “interested parties got really worked up recently” over Sallay’s arrest “because they realized the Rajapaksas could get exposed”, arguing that although the CID detained Sallay in late February there had been little public reaction until a major protest campaign was launched in recent weeks.
The Easter Sunday investigations have produced a series of accountability-track developments this cycle, including Additional Solicitor General submissions framing Sallay as a “key driving force” in the misdirection of the attacks and the Attorney General’s “mastermind and contractor” formal designation in May. The Catholic Church has separately said it will not accept any halt to the Easter probe while opposition camps continue street-level mobilisation over Sallay’s PTA treatment.
The justice minister has also faced separate public-attention demands this week, telling Parliament on Wednesday that no Cabinet approval has yet been taken on raising the retirement age of judges.
