Easter massacres: the accused acquit themselves in Parliament

After the recent revelations of the Channel 4 documentary, the Minister of Public Security once again exonerates the police, whose top management includes the former head of the secret service, whom the Supreme Court has ordered to pay compensation to the victims. The spokesman for the archdiocese of Colombo: impossible to get to the truth without a new investigation with the supervision of foreign experts.

Colombo (AsiaNews) - The debate on the report ordered by President Ranil Wickremesinghe on the investigation of the Easter 2019 attacks, which caused 269 deaths and around 500 injuries in Colombo, has arrived in Parliament in Sri Lanka.

The act was decided in the aftermath of the uproar caused by a documentary broadcast on 5 September by the British broadcaster Channel 4 which heavily implicated officials of the administration of the deposed president Rajapaksa, accusing them of having deliberately left the field open to Islamic extremists, authors of the massacres, to gain political advantage from the chaos.

In reality, during the parliamentary session, the Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles did nothing but reiterate the thesis according to which so far a role on the part of the police in the massacres has not clearly emerged.

The names of the allegedly accused officials have been turned over to the Attorney General for further proceedings, he said.

“Therefore,” he added, “it would be wrong for me to nominate some staff members as if they were already accused, until they are rightly prosecuted.”

Yet the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka itself has already condemned - together with former president Rajapaksa - also the former director of the security services Nilantha Jayawardene to compensate the victims; but despite this Jayawardene still remains in positions of responsibility at the top of the Sri Lankan police.

A fact that opposition deputies have cited as proof of the current administration's lack of will to truly ascertain responsibility for the massacres.

Disappointment was also expressed by the archdiocese of Colombo: the spokesperson Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando said that using people accused in relation to the Easter Sunday bombings to inform MPs about investigations into those bombings is an insult to Parliament.

“Having another debate in Parliament will not help find the real perpetrators” he continued, reiterating the archdiocese's request for “a new investigation with the supervision of foreign experts” to ascertain the truth.