Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
A Sri Lankan court on Tuesday found 15 of the 24 accused guilty in the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks case and sentenced each of them to more than 200 years in prison. The verdict was delivered by the Colombo Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar after a trial that lasted nearly five years.
The coordinated bombings were carried out on April 21, 2019, by nine suicide bombers from the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat, which was linked to ISIS. The blasts hit three Catholic churches and three luxury hotels, killing nearly 270 people, including 11 Indians, and injuring more than 500.
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According to an Adaderana report, the 15 convicted accused were each sentenced to 220 years of rigorous imprisonment. The three-judge bench of the High Court Trial-at-Bar, comprising Judges Navaratne Marasinghe, Ramanathan Kannan and Sujeewa Nissanka, convicted 15 accused and acquitted nine others.
Mohammadu Ebrahim Mohammdu Naufer, also known as Naufar Moulavi, the main accused in the case, was among those convicted. Initially, 25 people were charged over their role in the bombings, but after one suspect died, 24 were indicted in October 2021. A total of 23,270 charges were filed, and 2,309 witnesses testified for the prosecution.
The accused were charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for murder and attempted murder, conspiracy to commit terrorism, aiding and abetting, and possessing and handling firearms and explosives. Naufar’s links to extremist Zaharan Hashim, the leader of the National Thowhith Jamaath, were also investigated. Hashim was one of the suicide bombers who carried out the blast at the Shangri La Hotel.
In July, former police chief Pujith Jayasundera and Hemasiri Fernando, who was then the top bureaucrat in the Ministry of Defence, were handed the death sentence after being found guilty of criminal dereliction of duty for failing to act on prior intelligence that could have prevented the attacks. The bombings had triggered a political storm, with then President Maithripala Sirisena and then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe blamed for failing to prevent the attacks despite prior intelligence being available.
A presidential panel of inquiry appointed by Sirisena after the attacks later found the then president guilty of failing to prevent them. Sirisena, however, pleaded not guilty in the case filed after the panel’s findings. In 2023, Sirisena and the top defence hierarchy were also ordered to pay multiple millions of rupees in compensation to the families of the blast victims in fundamental rights petitions, underscoring the wider fallout of the Easter Sunday attacks.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
