Columns

The whole country is of one mind in wanting investigators to identify the mastermind(s) behind the Easter Sunday attacks and ensure that they are produced before the Courts and punished. Not only the Roman Catholic community which bore the brunt of the attacks nor the Muslim community on whom the responsibility is sought to be apportioned due to the fact that the suicide bombers were all Muslims. The inhuman attacks have to be viewed as a national issue affecting all Sri Lankans and therefore the truth has to be revealed.

But such an outcome can only be achieved if the investigations are conducted with impartiality and integrity and where the wrongdoers are punished according to law while the names of those wrongly accused are cleared. Only then will justice be done.

However the events of the last few weeks indicate there is a great danger of the course of justice being perverted by undue politicisation. The events of Easter Sunday 2019 shook the nation leaving behind a trail of pain and misery. Yet politicians and others without facilitating  the unraveling of the truth continue to use the incident to target their opponents or to achieve political and other collateral objectives.

While several people have been taken into custody and yet others are being investigated, the million dollar question of “who dunnit” remains unanswered. Only a credible and comprehensive investigation can unearth the truth.

Yet last week the country heard two Government Ministers naming two different individuals as the masterminds behind the attack. The Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekera making a statement in Parliament last Wednesday named Naufer Moulavias the mastermind behind the attacks.

A Daily Mirror online edition report on March 10, 2021 quoted the Minister as saying “The intelligence services have identified Naufer Moulavi as the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday terror attack while the Ibrahim brothers and several international organisations have funded the Thawheed Jamaath to carry out the attack.”

He told Parliament it was revealed that Naufer Moulavi, who was based in Qatar, had provoked Zahran and his followers to carry out the attack by brainwashing them. He did not reveal any details as to how Naufer Moulavi who was based in Qatar had “provoked” Zahran and his followers to carry out the attack by brainwashing them. Common sense would suggest that the mastermind behind the attacks would have had to apply a much greater deal of sophistication than brain washing to set up and detonate several bombs within the space of a few minutes at identified locations.

A few hours later Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage speaking in Parliament struck a different note to Minister Sarath Weerasekera and named Zahran as the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday attacks ignoring the fact that a mastermind was unlikely to engineer his own death while carrying out his dastardly acts.

Another attempt to politicise the investigations is the effort to foist the blame for the Easter Sunday attacks on the Yahapalana Government. Clearly the Yahapalana Government has to take responsibility for the failure to prevent such attacks despite the availability of sufficient intelligence with regard to the impending attacks but identifying the masterminds behind the attack is a different story.

There is also the irresponsible actions of various individuals using the media to accuse various individuals of being associated with the Easter Sunday attacks without an iota of evidence merely on the basis of their political or religious prejudice.

Yet another attempt to prevent a fully-fledged investigation into the Easter Sunday attacks was the Government’s plan to deny the Attorney General access to some of the volumes containing what it called sensitive information on the basis the Presidential Commission had requested such information be withheld from the Attorney General.

In a strongly worded editorial the Island newspaper of yesterday (March 13 ) condemned the Government’s attempt to deprive the Attorney General of access to all documents related to the Presidential Commission of Inquiry’s final report on the Easter Sunday carnage.

Referring to the Government’s subsequent decision to allow the Attorney General full access to the entire report, the Island Editorial comments as follows: “The Government has made another dramatic volte-face; the whole PCoI report was sent to the AG yesterday. Why could it not dispatch the report and all documents related to it to the AG immediately after they were submitted to the President on February 1, 2021? Some SLPP grandees claimed the documents at issue contained classified information about national security, and the government decision against sending them to the AG was based on a PCoI recommendation; they gave a twist to the penultimate paragraph in the PCoI covering letter to the President, in the report.

The Commission has said: “We draw Your Excellency’s attention to the fact that the documents marked ‘X’ have classified information obtained through intelligence agencies of the State. Furthermore, evidence pertaining to national security including intelligence and information was obtained through witnesses testifying in camera. We would, with due respect, recommend that these matters be considered before deciding to make them public.” (Emphasis added.)

No mention is made of the AG in this paragraph. But in its Chapter 30 (Conclusions), the report (on page 421) says specifically: “The CoI recommends that Your Excellency the President transmits a complete set of the Report to the Attorney General to consider institution of criminal proceedings against persons alleged to have committed the said offences. (Emphasis added.) Nobody should blame the PCoI members.”

The Island Editorial  goes on to ask: “Now, the question is why the government tried to prevent the AG from having access to the entire PCoI report. Did it seek to conceal anything therein, as its political opponents claim? The only way it can clear doubts and suspicions in the minds of people is to make the whole report public. As for the classified information about national security the PCoI report is said to contain, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Parliamentarian and former Army Commander Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka hit a bull’s eye in Parliament, the other day, while others were getting Maggie’s drawers. He said the Easter Sunday attacks had happened due to a massive national security failure, which everyone was aware of, and therefore the argument that information related thereto should not be made public was specious. “

The Island editorial further went on to call for the report in its entirety be made public and said “The PCoI, we repeat, has not said that the documents containing what it considers sensitive information about national security should not be made public. It has only asked the President to decide whether to do so, after taking into account what it calls ‘classified information obtained through intelligence agencies of the State’. The ball is now in the President’s court. We believe that he should seriously consider making the entire report public. Besides the AG, the lawmakers, the media, the aggrieved parties and the general public have a right to see the whole picture.”

Another worrying response to the Commission report is Minister G. L. Pieris’ statement suggesting that the Government would selectively implement the Commissions’ recommendations. The SLPP Chairman last Sunday ruled out the possibility of proscribing the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) as recommended by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) that probed the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks and emphasised that the particular recommendation was not acceptable to the Government and described it as a difficult recommendation but did not elaborate on the reasons for not implementing the recommendation.

He only said the proscription of the BBS would not do any good, and that implementation of the Commission’s recommendations would be the prerogative of the Government.

One hopes that with the entirety of the Commission’s report in the hands of the Attorney General the search for the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday attacks will yield results.

(javidyusuf@gmail.com)