COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defense has vehemently denounced the accusations leveled by the British television network Channel 4 in its new documentary that the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks were deliberately orchestrated by senior governmental officials
In a statement, the Defense Ministry went on to categorically deny Channel 4’s claims that Major General Suresh Sallay was complicit in the supposed calculated bombings, which targeted several churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka.
Deeming the accusations “outrageous”, the Defense Ministry reiterated that the terrorists involved in the Easter Sunday attacks, in which the lives of more than 260 people were and hundreds of others were left wounded, had never been on the government payroll.
The ministry also expressed profound dismay at Channel 4 for “promulgating such a malicious and unsubstantiated narrative.”
It asserted that Channel 4 would be held unequivocally accountable for any unforeseen actions or repercussions stemming from their “unfounded, malevolent, and poorly substantiated” claims made in the documentary.
Aired on September 05, Channel 4’ new ‘Dispatches’ investigation titled ‘Sri Lanka’s Easter Bombings’ is a nearly 50-minute-long video with serious yet straightforward allegations about the attacks based on testimonies of high-placed whistleblowers who alleged that governmental officials were complicit.
The main whistleblower Hanzeer Azad Maulana was once a spokesman for LTTE’s breakaway group Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pullikal (TMVP) led by current State Minister of Rural Road Development Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan.
Maulana told Channel 4 that he had witnessed a meeting between the suicide bombers and a top Sri Lankan intelligence officer in 2018.
Claiming that he had, on the directives of Pillayan, arranged the said meeting between then-army intelligence chief Major General Suresh Sallay and the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) members including its leader Zahran Hashim, Maulana said the plot to create insecurity in the country to pave way for former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to win the presidential election later in 2019 was hatched over 2-3 years.
Meanwhile, former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has also slammed the documentary, deeming it “an anti-Rajapaksa tirade aimed at blackening the Rajapaksa legacy from 2005 onwards and is a tissue of lies just like the previous films broadcast by the same Channel.”
