Sri Lanka arrests ex-intel chief over 2019 Easter bombings

Colombo: Sri Lanka’s criminal investigators arrested the country’s former intelligence chief on Wednesday in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 279 people, police said.

Retired Major-General Suresh Sallay was taken into custody at dawn in a suburb of the capital, police said.

“He was arrested for conspiracy and aiding and abetting the Easter Sunday attacks,” an investigating officer told AFP.

Sallay, who was promoted to State Intelligence Service (SIS) chief in 2019 after Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president, had been accused of involvement in the coordinated suicide bombings, a charge he has denied.

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 he 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.

Sallay was promoted to head the SIS, Sri Lanka’s main intelligence agency, following Rajapaksa’s victory, but was dismissed after Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidency in 2024, promising prosecutions of those behind the attack.

In the aftermath, officials blamed a local jihadist group for the suicide bombings on three churches and three hotels, but Sallay was also accused of orchestrating the attack.

Other investigations faulted the authorities for failing to act on warnings from an Indian intelligence agency that an attack was imminent.

More than 500 people were wounded in the bombings, which also killed 45 foreigners and crippled the island nation’s lucrative tourism industry.

The Supreme Court fined then-President Maithripala Sirisena and four senior officials more than $1.03 million in a civil case for their failure to prevent the attacks.

The UN has asked Sri Lanka to publish parts of previous inquiries into the bombings that were withheld from the public.