That question cannot be answered by Satyagrahas or fasts unto death. It cannot be settled by television debates, party speeches or social media outrage. Given that most Sri Lankas are traumatised by the attacks and seek closure, the question whether some elements of the State were involved, must be answered through evidence, tested in Court and placed before the public with the seriousness that the crime demands.
But the arrest itself marks a turning point. For the first time, a former head of the SIS stands at the centre of a criminal investigation into the attacks. Salley has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyers and political defenders said that the case against him is politically motivated and built on the statement of Azad Maulana, a former aide to Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, better known as Pillayan. They say the investigation undermines the defence establishment and humiliates a decorated intelligence officer. Salley’s wife says that his physical and mental health is deteriorating because of detention conditions. Some MPs have said that investigators, by seeking access to his electronic devices, risk exposing sensitive intelligence information.
An accused does not lose his rights because the allegations are serious and the presumption of innocence must apply to Salley as much as it should have applied to every detainee. The living conditions of all prisoners must be improved and they must not be subjected to inhumane treatment. An investigation that adheres to the highest standards is the only way to ensure justice.
On the other hand, when an allegation involves a former intelligence chief, extremist networks, possible political protection, and say that State actors operated through armed groups, the State cannot treat the suspect as an ordinary witness in an ordinary inquiry.
The investigation is not only about the conduct of one man. It asks whether parts of the security apparatus were misused by political actors, essentially to change the country’s political direction. In an inquiry of this nature, a suspect fleeing is not the only risk; records can be removed, witnesses can be pressured and old networks can protect themselves by comparing notes and getting their narrative in order.
The allegations placed in the public domain by investigators and the Attorney General’s Department are grave. Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala told Parliament that investigators had found evidence linking Salley to the Easter Sunday attacks. Court proceedings, including reporting by journalist Tharindu Jayawardhana gives the public a glimpse of allegations placed before the Court by the Attorney General’s Department.
They include claims that Army Intelligence provided money to obtain bail for Zaini Moulavi, brother of NTJ leader Zahran Hashim; that a group linked to Pillayan and members of Army Intelligence carried out political contract hits over several years, and that public funds were used to pay lawyers to defend intelligence personnel arrested in connection with such crimes.
These claims remain to be proved. But they are no longer merely claims by Azad Maulana in a documentary or repeated by activists.
Not merely a security failure
For years, the Easter Sunday attacks were explained mainly as a security and political failure. Sri Lankans were told that intelligence agencies did not act upon the warnings from India and that the feuding Yahapalanaya leaders paid scant attention to national security.
The 2019 Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) and the PCoI on the Easter Sunday attacks identified failures in the security and intelligence establishments, including politicisation, poor coordination and concerns about links within intelligence networks.
At first, many Sri Lankans accepted the official explanation. However, in recent years, many have begun to suspect that the attackers may have been guided, enabled or manipulated by those with greater resources, and political intent. They also believe that the investigation has been politicised, especially under the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration whose first move after coming into power was to remove and prosecute officials in charge of probing the Easter Sunday attacks. The new investigations attempt to address these concerns.
Salley’s arrest is not the only sign that the investigation has entered a new phase. The Fort Magistrate’s Court imposed an overseas travel ban on former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in connection with the continuing Easter Sunday investigation. Senior DIG Waruna Jayasundara, who earlier headed the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID), has also filed a writ petition seeking to prevent his arrest or detention. These developments show that investigators are no longer treating Easter Sunday as a story of Islamist violence and bureaucratic failure. The Government says that these developments have triggered some elements of the Opposition.
Ironically, many of those now speaking of rights, health, trauma and humane treatment spent years defending the very legal culture that made prolonged detention possible. Not only did they justify harsh anti-terror laws, they cheered when suspects were poor, Left-wing, activists, or trade unionists. They dismissed rights activists as unpatriotic and treated due process as an obstacle to national security. They cheered when Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka was dragged into custody and languished in jail for years.
Now that the machinery has turned towards an ally, they have discovered the importance of civil liberties. But rights are not shields for the powerful. If extended detention is wrong for Salley, it was also wrong for the nameless detainees who spent years inside prisons. The hypocrisy of Salley’s defenders should not become an excuse for the State to imitate their methods. The answer to a lawless security culture is not another lawless prosecution. It is a prosecution so careful that it exposes the old order without becoming its mirror image.
Opposition MP Dayasiri Jayasekara said that investigators are demanding the passwords to Salley’s computer and that this would expose Sri Lanka’s classified intelligence information to the world.
The statement was meant to defend Salley, but it raises serious concerns about how senior officers maintain sensitive information.
Why would a retired intelligence officer have classified State information on a personal computer or mobile phone? If such material exists, who authorised him to retain it? (In many other countries, such information has to be given over to the national archives system). Was it transferred lawfully? Was it encrypted, logged, audited and held under any official protocol? What would have happened if the device was stolen?
The Opposition cannot say, in one breath, that Salley’s devices may contain sensitive intelligence information and, in the next, insist that investigators have no legitimate reason to examine them. If a private device contains State secrets, that itself is a matter for investigation.
Security culture
No serious State can allow former intelligence officials to walk away with operational material, source details, internal communications or classified records. Intelligence does not belong to an officer but to the Republic. If anything, Jayasekara’s complaint strengthens the case for scrutiny rather than weakening it.
The issue is not simply what Salley allegedly did before the Easter Sunday attacks. The Government must scrutinise the security culture that allowed intelligence records and networks to become so personalised that they follow retired officers home.
Sri Lanka has lived for decades with intelligence structures shaped by war, counter-insurgency, secrecy and political patronage. During the war, many citizens accepted the expansion of these institutions, as necessary. After the war, the country moved from emergency to normalcy without asking what parts of that machinery still served national security, what parts had become political instruments, and what safeguards were needed to keep these institutions under check.
Intelligence agencies are not ordinary bureaucracies. They hold secrets, cultivate sources, work in shadows and are useful, but dangerous to democracy when they escape oversight.
The investigation must, therefore, follow the evidence wherever it leads. The victims of Easter Sunday have had enough of Commissions, speeches, promises and selective outrage. They need truth that can withstand the scrutiny of the Court and accountability that goes beyond foot soldiers.
The arrest of Suresh Salley is a necessary test of whether Sri Lanka can separate national security from political security. For too long, the intelligence world was treated as untouchable. Citizens were told not to ask, journalists not to dig, and families to wait, an arrangement has now been disturbed, which is a chance to begin again.
By Rathindra Kuruwita/Sunday Observer