SL to probe new exposé on intel role in ’19 blasts

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s government will appoint a parliamentary committee to investigate allegations made in a British television report that Sri Lankan intelligence had complicity in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 people.

A man interviewed in the Channel 4 videos released Tuesday said he arranged a meeting between a local Islamic State-inspired group and a top state intelligence official to hatch a plot to create insecurity and enable Gotabaya Rajapaksa to win the presidential election later that year.

On Wednesday, opposition leader Sajith Premadasa called for an international inquiry into the bombing attack. “A large majority believe a fair local investigation has not been conducted into this,” Premadasa said in Parliament.

Premadasa stressed that justice should be delivered to the victims of the attack and therefore, there is a need for “a transparent international inquiry to find out the truth on attack.”

The man in the Channel 4 programme, Azad Maulana, was a spokesperson for a breakaway group of the Tamil Tiger rebels that later became a pro-state militia and helped the government defeat the rebels and win Sri Lanka’s long civil war in 2009.

Maulana said he arranged a meeting in 2018 between IS-inspired extremists and a top intelligence officer at the behest of his boss Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, of rebel splinter group-turned-party.

Rajapaksa was a top defence official during the war, and his older brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, had been defeated in the 2015 elections after 10 years in power.