New Delhi: A special court in Sri Lanka has handed the death sentence to the country’s former police chief Pujith Jayasundara and former defense secretary Hemasiri Fernando for failing to prevent the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings despite prior intelligence warnings.
In a majority ruling Friday, a three-judge bench found that Jayasundara, who served as inspector general of police at the time of the attacks, and Fernando had failed in their duties to stop the deadly attacks that killed 279 people, including 45 foreign nationals.The attacks by Islamic State-inspired terrorists on churches and luxury hotels also injured several hundreds of people.
Jayasundara and Fernando can challenge the sentence in the Supreme Court.
Although the sentence carries the death penalty, Sri Lanka has maintained an unofficial moratorium on executions since 1976. Those sentenced to death are typically kept on death row, with many sentences later commuted to life imprisonment.
The ruling reversed a lower court decision in 2022 that had acquitted the duo. The state had appealed that verdict, arguing that senior officials had failed to respond adequately despite receiving advance warnings of the attacks.
The judgment comes amid renewed scrutiny of the Easter bombings under President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who pledged during his 2024 election campaign to pursue accountability for one of the country’s deadliest terrorist attacks.
In February, Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department arrested the former head of the State Intelligence Service, retired Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. for aiding and abetting the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks.
His arrest marked the first high-profile detention connected to the Easter bombings since Dissanayake took office.
The coordinated attacks on 21 April, 2019, were carried out by suicide bombers linked to a local Islamist extremist group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The bombers struck three churches holding Easter services and three luxury hotels in Colombo and nearby cities.
Discussion around Colombo’s security officials having prior knowledge of the attacks began after Britain’s Channel 4 in 2023 ran a documentary featuring a whistleblower who alleged that Sallay met with individuals linked to the attackers before the bombings and approved the plot as part of an effort to shape the outcome of the 2019 presidential election.
Two days after the attacks, Gotabaya Rajapaksa formally announced his presidential candidacy, campaigning on promises of restoring national security. He went on to win the election by a wide margin later that year.
A Sri Lankan court in June barred Rajapaksa and two retired military officers from leaving the country as investigators widen their probe into the bombings. The order marked the first time investigators formally sought to connect the former President to the Easter Sunday bombings investigation, more than four years after he was driven from office by mass anti-government protests triggered by Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis in decades.
(Edited by Tony Rai)