Colombo (AsiaNews) – A Sri Lankan court has sentenced former Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara and former Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence Hemasiri Fernando to death after they were found guilty of negligence for failing to prevent the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, which saw more than 260 people killed and thousands more wounded.
The three-judge High Court panel issued the sentence yesterday by a two-to-one decision. Following the verdict, the two former officials were transferred to prison.
According to the Court, Jayasundara and Fernando were guilty of dereliction of duty and complicity in the deaths for failing to act despite receiving intelligence warnings of the risk of attacks.
On Easter Sunday morning, 21 April 2019, suicide bombers simultaneously targeted three hotels in the capital Colombo and three churches, two Catholic and one Protestant, in the eastern city of Batticaloa. The victims included 42 foreign nationals.
More than seven years later, many of the survivors continue to live with severe physical and psychological consequences.
The Catholic Church of Sri Lanka has consistently maintained that the people identified as the perpetrators are not the true instigators of the mass killing, and has repeatedly called for a full probe into what it considers a broader corruption scandal.
Speaking to AsiaNews, Rupika Rosario, mother of Fathima Asla, the only Muslim girl killed in the attack on St Sebastian's Catholic Church in Katuwapitiya, greeted the sentence with mixed feelings.
“I will never get my darling Asla. But I like the verdict, because they should also realise the depth of our pain,” she said.
For her, after more than seven years, the country is finally seeing a more credible judicial process, but she reiterated that accountability does not end with the two former officials.
“We need to know exactly who is or who are the main/direct culprits of this massacre. ... What was their purpose in killing such innocent human beings in this way?" she noted.
Sri Lanka retains the death penalty, but a moratorium on executions has been in effect since 1976. Consequently, capital sentences are usually commuted to life imprisonment.
According to several observers, the current president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, intends to maintain the existing moratorium.
