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Even as Arugam Bay’s famed surfing waves receded this off season leaving the sleepy coastal town to slumber on, it was rudely awoken to find itself turned into a hotbed of  international intrigue, and the target of an imminent terrorist attack, with its multi-religious residents held hostage to terror as a result of an insufferable Israeli presence.

In June this year, President Ranil had appointed a committee of three headed by retired High Court Judge Jayaki de Alwis to inquire into lapses in security committed by the State Intelligence Service, the Chief of National Intelligence, and other relevant authorities. The committee was tasked with focusing and evaluating how the two agencies had responded ‘to prior information and intelligence provided by Indian agencies’, which had warned of the impending attacks.

A second-time bomb is set to blow up tomorrow at 10 am sharp. Its fallout will contain the second unpublished report of a committee of three headed by retired Supreme Court Judge S.I. Imam last year in September. Briain’s Channel 4 had aired a news documentary based on a whistleblower’s allegation that Lanka’s State Intelligence Service had failed to avert the Easter Sunday carnage. In the wake of the uproar that eensued, former President Ranil Wickremesinghe had appointed the Imam committee to specifically probe the claims Channel 4 had made.

On Sunday, Gammanpila reiterated his threat to publish the two reports online unless the Government published them before his deadline. He said he was well aware of the gravity of the legal consequences that would follow. He had been advised by an eminent legal team that he faced a 14-year jail term if he released the document to the public. “I decided to brave the risk.”

The previous week, after Gammanpila had issued an ultimatum to the President that, unless he released the two unpublished reports to the public first, he would detonate the timebomb online to the people, Minister Vijitha Herath had requested him to hand over the two secret reports to the Government within three days or face serious legal repercussions. But Gammanpila had stuck to his guns and said, “We wouldn’t have built our homes in the cemetery if we were scared of ghosts.”

PIVITHURU LEADER GAMMANPILA: Cracks open the controversial Easter egg

This Monday morning, after carrying out his threat to release the de Alwis report to the public first, Gammanpila held a press briefing to explain why he had done so.

Prefacing his revelations on the Alwis committee’s finding, Gammanpila played a video recording of Anura Kumara addressing a pre-election rally where he says, “If Ranil had appointed a committee to inquire into a land dispute between him and his family members, then we wouldn’t have been the least concerned. But this was a committee, on which a great deal of the people’s money had been spent, to inquire into public safety. It was people’s sacred right to know. But it was not released to the public.”

VIJITHA HERATH: Rejects

Gammanpila said, “Despite granting the President a 20-minute grace, the deadline for him to reveal has passed. I will now disclose the committee’s findings. Citing page number and para in the Alwis report, he said it had identified 18 other officials, including former Presidents Maithripala and Ranil, as who should be charged in court with criminal negligence. But his singular motive was to name Ravi Seneviratne and Shani Abeysekera as two senior retired police officers, against whom the committee had recommended criminal charges to be framed.

Gammanpila declared: On page 41 in the committee report it is stated that Seneviratne, who had been on leave from the 9th to the 16th of April, had been warned on April 9, 2019 by the Indian Intelligence Service of an impending terror attack on churches, and elsewhere by the National Thowheed Jamath, led by Zahran Hashim.

The explosive dossier, containing the names of addresses of those involved in the terror plot and a detailed account of their movements and targets, had remained unopened on Ravi Seneviratne’s desk since “the Senior DIG’s Office informed the Commission that Seneviratne had instructed them not to open confidential letters addressed to him in his absence.”

On Seneviratne’s return to office on April 16, he opens the letter and sends it to DIG R. Nagahamulla with instructions for a report by May 1. But mysteriously, it arrives on Nagahamulla’s desk on April 22, far too late to avert the Easter Sunday tragedy.

THE CARDINAL: Trusts Govt

Gammanpila goes on to say: “On page 14 of the report, the Alwis Committee had also recommended that criminal charges be filed against Shani Abeysekara, who was the CID Director at the time of the Easter Sunday attacks.”

He says the importance of singling out these two senior officers from others in the Alwis dock is because they have been brought back from retirement into active police service. Ravi Seneviratne has been appointed the Secretary of the Public Security Ministry, and, along with Shani Abeysekera, placed in charge of leading the fresh investigation to find the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday carnage by the new government.

Gammanpila ventured to ask, “Can we place any confidence in an Easter Sunday investigation led by them? Can we expect justice? Did President Anura Kumara suppress the de Alwis report and not reveal it to the public as promised to protect the reputations of his two new appointees, namely, Ravi Seneviratne and Shani Abeysekera, who had also been recommended by the Alwis Committee of Inquiry, for criminal prosecution?”

In his attempt to quench the public thirst on Easter Sunday’s unknown brew, by providing another draught, drawn from a new presidential committee tap, had Gammanpila rushed where angels feared to tread? If he had expected to be martyred for carrying out his threat and bravely publishing the committee report, he found he was pilloried, damned and crucified instead.

Do you believe the government should release all commission reports on the Easter Sunday massacre inquiries to the public without any redaction?

The government flatly rejected Gammanpila’s call to remove these two officers from their key posts until they acquitted themselves in court of the charges made in the Alwis report. Minister Vijitha Herath said on Tuesday that the two officers would not be removed for any reason. He questioned Gammanpila’s ulterior motives in leaking the reports, and cast aspersions on the integrity of High Court Judge  Jayaki de Alwis, who retired last year after 19 years of service.

At a press conference held on Wednesday, the Cardinal said he accepted the government’s rejection of the report. He said he had seen it since President Ranil had sent it to the Catholic Bishops Conference, marked confidential, shortly after it was given to him before the elections. He rejected it since it was not worth the paper it was written on.

Instead, he placed his trust in President Anura Kumara’s promise to start a fresh probe to find the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday tragedy. Asked by a journalist whether he had not placed a similar implicit trust in Gotabaya a few years back, he said one has to trust someone, in the manner one trusts the driver of a bus when one boards it.

JUDGE ALWIS: Led committee

A member of the Ranil-led alliance, the New Democratic Party, Dr. Rajitha Senaratne said, he does not give two hoots whether Gammanpila revealed the report or whether some other pila leaked it. “What matters the most,” he said, “is whether the facts presented and the conclusions reached are valid or not. Neither has the government branded the report, released by Gammanpila on Monday, as fake.”

It was left to former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had commissioned the two committees of inquiry, to wrap up this week’s controversial debate. He issued a special statement denying the imputations cast that he had an axe to grind with the two police officers and had so manipulated the Alwis Committee to include their names as men who should be charged with criminal negligence for failing to avert the Easter tragedy.

At the end of the week, Gammanpila had received enough and more flak than he had bargained for. The showmanship he has often displayed as a master publicity stuntman has been used to damn his credibility in the public eye. He has been placed in the stockade with rotten fruits of hate flung at him from every quarter.

Aspersions have been cast on retired High Court Judge Jayaki de Alwis to question her integrity and defame her character in the court of public opinion. Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe has been painted as an unscrupulous scheming politician who exploited presidential power to settle old scores with vengeance through a bespoke committee report he ordered.

Gammanpila’s detractors, and those against the committee’s findings, have thrown every gaslighting book at him to disparage the de Alwis report, and thereby to deter, distract and dissuade public attention from focusing on the Alwis Committee’s recommendations. The messenger was blasted first to kingdom come, and none considered nor bothered to hear nor read the message he bore.

At this fast rate, with different stakeholders deciding which choice meat will flatter their palates the most and discreetly serving it onto their plates in the buffet of Easter blast reports, is there any hope of finding the true mastermind that will sate the nation’s elusive quest?

With Easter blast report after report ordered by successive presidents, piling up and gathering dust in the Government Archives, and yet no mastermind in sight, what hope is there for those left maimed and for the families of those who died in Easter’s bloody tragedy, in praying for earthly justice in man-made courts but to pray for divine intervention as the Cardinal once prayed in church for divine retribution.