High Court convicts 15 for organising the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings

The verdict includes Islamist preacher Naufer Moulavi guilty, deemed the ideologue behind the group whose suicide attacks killed 279 people in three churches and three hotels. Nine other defendants were acquitted. A separate issue concerns officials who knew about the threat but failed to prevent the attacks.

by Melani Manel Perera

Colombo (AsiaNews) – Sri Lanka’s High Court handed down its verdict today in the long trial against the group accused of planning the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

Some 15 accused were convicted and nine acquitted. Among those convicted is Naufer Moulavi, the Islamist preacher who allegedly played a key role in organising the attacks.

The latter, which took place on 21 April 2019, resulted in the deaths of 279 people and injuries to more than 500. Forty-five foreign nationals were among the victims.

The coordinated explosions, which targeted three churches and three luxury hotels, were the deadliest attacks in Sri Lanka since the end of the civil war in 2009.

All the suicide bombers who carried out the attacks died in the blasts.

Investigators linked the attacks to Islamist extremist groups. Naufer Moulavi is considered a founding member of the National Towheed Jamaat (NTJ), a Salafi-jihadi organisation linked to the Islamic State group.

Moulavi had a close relationship with Muhammad Zahran, the NTJ leader and key operational figure behind the attacks, who died as a suicide bomber during the events. The two had known each other since the early 2000s; according to various accounts, Moulavi was Zahran’s mentor and fostered his religious education.

In 2006, the two reportedly co-founded a religious organisation in Kattankudy, contributing to the spread of extremist ideas among the youth. In 2016, the NTJ leadership gravitated toward the violent ideologies of the Islamic State group.

Moulavi was arrested in May 2019 (one month after the attacks), and has remained in custody ever since.

Today’s ruling concerns the groups that organised the massacres; the court must now hand down sentences for the 15 convicted individuals.

Meanwhile, the ruling is caught up with the broader context of accountability for the 2019 massacres, a matter for which the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has fought vigorously to secure justice.

Sri Lankan authorities have acknowledged a serious lapse by the intelligence and security systems, noting that advance information regarding the potential threat was not adequately shared with the relevant authorities.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ordered former President Maithripala Sirisena to pay millions of rupees in compensation to the victims, holding him responsible for these failures.

Furthermore, on 31 July, former Police Chief Pujith Jayasundara and former Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, who had been found guilty of negligence for failing to prevent the attacks, were sentenced to death by another Sri Lankan court.

The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has consistently maintained that the identified perpetrators were not the true masterminds behind the attacks and continues to demand a full investigation into what it views as a wider case of corruption.

For his part, the Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, reacted to the verdict, speaking out against the death penalty, which he deems an unacceptable violation of human dignity.