A Sri Lankan court has sentenced former police chief Pujith Jayasundara to death for failing to prevent the devastating Easter Sunday bombings of 2019. On Friday (31 July), a three-member High Court bench convicted him of “criminal negligence” and handed down the sentence.
Sri Lanka, however, has had an informal moratorium on carrying out the death penalty since 1976, so death sentences handed down by courts are generally commuted to life imprisonment. The country’s current president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, favours keeping this moratorium in place.
On Easter Sunday in 2019, three tourist hotels and three churches in Sri Lanka were bombed at almost the same time. Two of the churches were Catholic and one was Protestant. More than 260 people were killed in the devastating attacks, including 42 foreign nationals.
A parliamentary inquiry committee formed after the attacks found that, despite repeated warnings from intelligence agencies, police and intelligence officials failed to take appropriate action. It is for this failure that former police chief Jayasundara has been convicted of criminal negligence. The conviction is subject to appeal.
Jayasundara has the right to appeal Friday’s verdict. A separate verdict on the same charge was also due Friday against Hemasiri Fernando, a former secretary of the defence ministry.
Two Sri Lanka-based extremist groups were blamed for the 2019 attacks. None of those identified as directly involved are alive today, though separate trials are under way against several others accused of links to the attackers.
Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church has claimed that those identified so far as the masterminds or attackers were not in fact the main planners. It contends that a larger conspiracy lay behind the devastating Easter Sunday attacks.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report