More than half a decade has elapsed since the Easter Sunday terror attacks (2019), which claimed about 270 lives and left hundreds of others with permanent injuries, but the survivors of terror, the family members of the deceased, the Catholic Church, civil society organisations and others are still crying out for justice. Sri Lanka has had four Presidents since the carnage that shook the world—Maithripala Sirisena, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Anura Kumara Dissanayake––but, sadly, justice remains far from served.
Spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Colombo Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando has revealed the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday attacks. Speaking at a discussion on Sunanda Deshapirya’s book about the Easter Sunday carnage, on Tuesday, at the BMICH, the prelate declared that the terror mastermind was the person who had identified himself as Abu Hind.
Whenever National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) leader Zahran Hashim spoke with Abu Hind over the telephone, he ensured that everyone else was out of earshot, according to his wife Hadiya’s testimony before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (COI) which probed the Easter Sunday attacks, Fr. Fernando said, noting that when the then SDIG in charge of the CID, Ravi Seneviratne sought to reveal who Abu Hind actually was, while testifying before the COI, he was asked not to do so; a commissioner jotted down a name on a piece of paper and passed it on to Seneviratne, asking whether it was the person the latter was referring to, and Seneviratne answered in the affirmative. One wonders why the COI prevented the true identity of Abu Hind being revealed then and there. Intriguingly, the COI final report says: “The CID investigators who testified before the COI informed that they are investigating the identity of Abu Hind. Those investigations should proceed (p 222).” If it is true that the SDIG of the CID had tried to reveal the real identity of Abu Hind, then one can ask why the COI has, in its final report, asked the CID to conduct a fresh probe. Interestingly, in March 2021, the then Attorney General Dappula de Livera instructed IGP C. D. Wickramaratne to conduct a thorough investigation in respect of Abu Hind, Ahamed Thalib Lukman Thalib, his son Lukman Thalib Ahamed aka ‘Abu Abdulla,’ Rimsan and Mahendran Pulasthini alias ‘Sara.’ They have been named in the COI report, under the Chapter, ‘Foreign Involvement’. There would have been no need for further efforts to identify Abu Hind if the CID had already done so while the COI proceedings were in progress.
The fact that Abu Hind was Zahran’s handler and masterminded the Easter Sunday attacks has been known since the submission of the final report of the COI to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in February 2021. We, too, have editorially pointed out that the terror mastermind is Zahran’s handler although the Gotabaya government insisted that Naufer Moulavi had masterminded the terror attacks. In May 2021, the then Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera told Parliament that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had identified Naufer as the Easter Sunday terror mastermind. Claims made by outfits such as the FBI cannot be taken seriously owing to the allegation that there was a foreign involvement in the Easter Sunday carnage. Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, who was the Justice Minister in the Yahapalana government, has, in a recent television interview, attributed the Easter Sunday attacks to some geostrategic issues that the handover of the Hambantota Port to China gave rise to.
Fr. Fernando also said in his aforesaid speech that the military intelligence had been in touch with Jamil, an NTJ bomber, who was asked by a mysterious caller not to blow himself at Taj Samudra. While Jamil was behaving in a suspicious manner at a mosque in Dehiwala, after abandoning the Taj Samudra mission, he was questioned by a security officer, and he claimed that he was upset over a domestic issue. He gave the security guard his wife’s telephone number, asking the latter to check the veracity of his claim. The guard called Jamil’s wife, and a little while later a military intelligence operative used her phone to call him, according to Fr. Fernando, who said it was proof that the military intelligence had communicated with the bomber until he blew himself up in a guesthouse in Dehiwala on 21 April 2019.
Fr. Fernando also alleged that a truck travelling from Katunayake to Panadura had been stopped by the police near Gelanigama, but the OIC of the police station in the area had asked them to release the vehicle forthwith, and according to a log entry made by a police sergeant, the OIC had acted on instructions given by SDIG Deshabandu Tennakoon. That truck may have carried explosives and had it been checked, the Easter Sunday tragedy could have been prevented, the prelate said.
There are different narratives about the mastermind/s behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks. It is claimed in some quarters that the carnage was carried out to facilitate Gotabaya’s ascension to the presidency, but there is another school of thought, according to which there was a foreign hand in the terrorist bombings. The witnesses who expressly testified that there had been ‘an external hand or conspiracy behind the attacks’, according to the COI report, are Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, former President Maithripala Sirisena, former Minister Rauf Hakeem, former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen, former Governor Azath Salley, former SJB MP Mujibur Rahman, former SIS Director SDIG Nilantha Jayawardena, former STF Commandant M. R. Lateef, former Chief of Defence Staff Ravindra Wijegunaratne, former SDIG CID Ravi Seneviratne and former CID Director Shani Abeysekera.
Is Abu Hind Sri Lankan or foreign? An international expert on terrorism is quoted by the COI, in its final report, as having said: “Abu Hind was a character created by a section of a provincial Indian intelligence apparatus. The intelligence that the Director SIS received on 4th, 20th and 21st April 2019 was from this operation and the intelligence operative pretending to be one Abu Hind. Operatives of this outfit operate on social media pretending to be Islamic State figures. They are trained to run virtual personae (p 219).”
In trying to solve the Easter Sunday carnage mastermind puzzle, let’s apply the Occam’s razor method, which means that when there are two competing ideas, the simpler one should be chosen. Now that the Catholic Church has said in no uncertain terms that the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks is the person who used nom de guerre, Abu Hind, and current Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security, SDIG (retd) Seneviratne and the members of the COI have been aware of his true identity, further probes to ascertain the true identity of the terror mastermind will be redundant.
‘Abu Hind’ must be arrested, interrogated and prosecuted forthwith if he is a Sri Lankan, and if he is a foreign national, as the aforesaid international expert told the COI, assistance of Interpol and the country where the suspect is residing must be sought to bring him to justice.