COLOMBO – The Sri Lankan government is still unable to release all the volumes of a Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) report on the Easter Sunday attack to the public due to confidentiality issues with some evidence, Public Security Minister Tiran Alles said.
The complete PCoI report on the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks was handed over to the Catholic Bishop’s Conference in April this year by Alles, four years after one of the worst terror attacks in Sri Lanka that killed at least 269 people. The simultaneous attacks targeted three Churches and three high-end hotels, mainly in Colombo.
However, the government has yet to release the full report to the public amid allegations that some high military officials had a hand in the planning of carnage, which was carried out by Islamist extremists.
The Catholic community and its leader Cardinal Malcom Ranjith raised concerns as to why then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa failed to release all the volumes of inquiry into the Easter Sunday probe. President Ranil Wickremesinghe who succeeded Rajapaksa gave the green light for Alles to release the report this year.
Alles told reports in Colombo that the full report was handed over to Cardinal as a confidential document, noting that the Presidential Commission had clearly mentioned that these volumes are classified documents which cannot be publicized. He said they were so classified because of those who have given evidence in confidence.
The Easter Sunday attack led Sri Lanka’s Buddhist majority and Catholic minority to overwhelmingly back Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the November 2019 presidential election. It also led to heightened Islamophobia and anti-Muslim attacks with the ethnic minority Muslims being suspected of being involved in terror activities.
Rajapaksa and his government were ousted by mass public protests.
“Recently when I checked, they (Catholic Bishop’s Conference) are still studying it,” Alles said adding that some Catholics who are not in the Bishop’s Conference have been criticizing the government over the Easter Sunday probe.
Rajapaksa, his aides, and seniors in military intelligence have denied any involvement in the Easter Sunday attack.
Most Catholics and Cardinal Malcolm Ranjit have continuously called for an international probe into the Easter Sunday attack, though successive governments have repeatedly rejected the call.
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