Frantic Nandasena Demands SJB’s ‘Confidential Easter Attacks Report’ Handed Over To Catholic clergy

APRIL 29, 2021

The CID has made a “polite request” from the Executive Director of the Center for Society and Religion (CSR) in Maradana, Colombo for the confidential report handed over to Catholic clergy by the main opposition delegation that met them earlier this week.

SJB MPs met with a group of Catholic clergy on Monday (26) to hand over a confidential report on the April 21, 2019 bombings to catholic priests and brief them on the contents. The Catholic clergy were also provided with transcripts of recent revelations made in parliament by SJB MPs Manusha Nanayakkara and Harin Fernando. Nanayakkara said they had urged the Board of the Archbishop to grant them a meeting so the matters could be explained in greater detail.

JB MPs Lakshman Kirirella, Patali Champika Ranawaka, Dr. Harsha De Silva, Eran Wickremeratne, and Nalin Bandara attended the meeting.

“If there is valuable evidence and salient points in the report with regard to the perpetrators of the attacks, the information is required for investigations. Therefore, a humble request was made for the report,” the Police Spokesman told the media, referring to the CID’s “request” from the CSR Executive Director.

Opposition Activists are warning that the move would create a serious fear psychosis about meeting with members of the opposition if the meetings were to result in summons and questions from the CID.

“All this is a part of the crackdown on the opposition that the President has now begun in earnest,” said a SJB MP commenting on the development. “It will make people fearful about meeting with us, because no one wants to get on the wrong side of the CID and have them visit their organisations and start launching fake investigations,” the SJB MP said.

“The right way to go about it would be to ask the SJB to hand over the report,” the MP said, rather than harass ordinary citizens.

An increasingly insecure President Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa is besieged by speculation that he and the intelligence services that remained loyal to him after the fall of his brother’s regime in 2015 might have had a role in the Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 people.

His regime has resorted to cracking down on all those who dare to expose damning details of an alleged connection between the Easter bombers and the Sri Lankan intelligence services.

After his explosive revelations in Parliament indicating that the ‘Sonic-Sonic’ code name used in communications between the bombers alluded to Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s State Intelligence Services Chief Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay, the CID broke protocol and issued summons on SJB MP Harin Fernando.

Statements made in Parliament cannot be investigated by law enforcement and action cannot be taken against members of parliament for speeches made on the floor of the House under the provisions of the Parliament Powers and Privileges Act.

n a strange twist, the SIS Chief Sallay, the first military officer to ever be appointed SIS director, paid a call on the Attorney General after Dappula De Livera received the extended volumes of the Easter Sunday that President Nandasena Rajapaksa previously withheld due to “national security reasons”.

It is unclear if these volumes, that were not tabled in Parliament, contain the damning testimony Fernando alluded to in his parliament speech, from CID officers and others about the persistent presence of military intelligence personnel in the narratives surrounding the Easter Sunday bombers.

The former IGP Pujith Jayasundera told the Commission that the sole-surviving bomber, who failed to detonate the Taj Samudra bomb, was contacted by a military intelligence officer shortly before he went back to the Tropical Inn in Dehiwala and blew himself up.

Sources told Colombo Telegraph that the Taj Samudra (failed) bomber might have had MI handlers who were determined to find out his location after he failed to carry out his mission. Revelations have been made in Parliament and elsewhere by opposition MPs that the Dehiwala bomber’s wife received a visit at her home from military intelligence officers by 10AM on April 21, 2019 just over an hour after the blasts around the capital.

Fernando revealed in Parliament that a CID officer had given testimony before the Easter Sunday Commission that an intelligence officer had been arrested by the CID after it was found he had communicated with one of the bombers. Before the CID subjected the intelligence officer to interrogation, the Directorate of Military Intelligence sent officials to the CID to whisk the arrested intelligence operative away, claiming he was “one of their projects”.

Read More