Sallay, SIS chief since 2019 under Rajapaksa, denies allegations of involvement in suicide bombings
\n colombo
\nSri Lanka\u2019s criminal investigators arrested the country\u2019s former intelligence chief on Wednesday in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners.
\nPolice said retired Major General Suresh Sallay was taken into custody at dawn in a suburb of the capital, Colombo, in the most high-profile arrest in the long-running investigation.
\n\u201cHe was arrested for conspiracy and aiding and abetting the Easter Sunday attacks,\u201d an investigating officer told AFP.
\n\u201cHe has been in touch with people involved in the attacks, even recently.\u201d
\nThe coordinated bombings targeted three upmarket hotels in the capital, two Roman Catholic churches, and an evangelical Protestant church outside Colombo.
\nThe attacks were blamed on a homegrown jihadist group.
\nThe Catholic church, which has spearheaded a campaign demanding justice for all victims of the brutal bombings, welcomed the arrest as a sign that the investigation was continuing.
\n\u201cWhat we need is the truth behind the Easter attacks. We want to see justice for all the victims,\u201d church spokesman Father Cyril Gamini Fernando told AFP.
\nThe church had previously accused successive governments of failing to identify the masterminds behind the bombings.
\nThe string of suicide bombings on April 21, 2019, became the worst attack against civilians in a country where at least 100,000 people had been killed in a Tamil separatist war that ended in May 2009 after nearly four decades of violence.
\nSallay, who was promoted to State Intelligence Service (SIS) chief in 2019 after Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president, had been accused of involvement in organising the suicide bombings, a charge he has denied.
\nHis long-expected arrest came ahead of the seventh anniversary of the bombings.
\nBritish broadcaster Channel 4 reported in 2023 that Sallay was linked to the Islamist bombers and had met them prior to the attack.
\nA whistleblower told the network that Sallay had permitted the attack to proceed with the intention of influencing that year\u2019s presidential election in favour of Rajapaksa.
\nTwo 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.
\nA former member of the jihadist group told reporters in 2019 that they were originally funded by a military intelligence unit to propagate a fundamentalist ideology in Sri Lanka\u2019s multi-ethnic eastern province.
\nSallay was employed in the intelligence unit that funded the jihadists. The government at the time admitted the military was behind the radical group.
\nSallay was promoted to head the SIS, Sri Lanka\u2019s main intelligence agency, following Rajapaksa\u2019s victory, but was dismissed after Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidency in 2024, promising prosecutions of those behind the attacks.
\nWhile local jihadists were held responsible, Sallay was also accused of orchestrating the attack.
\nTwo days after the bombings, ISIS claimed responsibility, but investigators said they had no evidence to directly establish a foreign link.
\nOther investigations faulted the authorities for failing to act on warnings from an Indian intelligence agency that an attack was imminent.
\nMore than 500 people were wounded in the bombings, which crippled the island nation\u2019s lucrative tourism industry.
\nUS authorities in 2021 charged three Sri Lankans with supporting the Easter attacks, in which five US nationals were killed.
\nThe three are among 25 suspects indicted in Sri Lanka\u2019s High Court.
\nThe 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.
\nThe UN has asked Sri Lanka to publish parts of previous inquiries into the bombings that were withheld from the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sallay, SIS chief since 2019 under Rajapaksa, denies allegations of involvement in suicide bombings colombo Sri Lanka\u2019s criminal investigators arrested the country\u2019s former intelligence chief on Wednesday in connection with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 279 people, including 45 foreigners. Police said retired Major General Suresh Sallay was taken into custody at dawn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-533550","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n