Sri Lanka’s criminal investigators arrested the country’s former intelligence chief on Wednesday (Feb 25) in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners.
Police said retired Major General Suresh Sallay was taken into custody at dawn in a suburb of the capital, Colombo in the most high profile arrest in the long-running investigation.
“He was arrested for conspiracy and aiding and abetting the Easter Sunday attacks,” an investigating officer told AFP.
“He has been in touch with people involved in the attacks, even recently.”
The coordinated bombings targeted three upmarket hotels in the capital, two Roman Catholic churches, and an evangelical Protestant church outside Colombo.
The attacks were blamed on a homegrown jihadist group.
The Catholic church, which has spearheaded a campaign demanding justice for all victims of the brutal bombings, welcomed the arrest as a sign the investigation was continuing.
“What we need is the truth behind the Easter attacks. We want to see justice for all the victims,” church spokesman Father Cyril Gamini Fernando told AFP.
The church had previously accused successive governments of failing to identify the masterminds behind the bombings.
The string of suicide bombings on Apr 21, 2019 became the worst attack against civilians in a country where at least 100,000 people had been killed in a Tamil separatist war that ended in May 2009 after nearly four decades of violence.
Sallay, who was promoted to State Intelligence Service (SIS) chief in 2019 after Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president, had been accused of involvement in organising the suicide bombings, a charge he has denied.
His long-expected arrest came ahead of the seventh anniversary of the bombings.
British broadcaster Channel 4 reported in 2023 that Sallay was linked to the Islamist bombers and had met them prior to the attack.
A whistleblower told the network that Sallay had permitted the attack to proceed with the intention of influencing that year’s presidential election in favour of Rajapaksa.
Two days after the bombings, Rajapaksa declared his candidacy and went on to win the November vote in a landslide after promising to stamp out Islamist extremism.
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