• Non-registered NGOs to be banned

Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles has raised concerns about the extent of the desire of the Catholic community, including the Catholic Church, to uncover the truth behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks of 2019.

During a media briefing yesterday (28), the media queried Alles regarding the Catholic Church's response to the Government following the receipt of the complete report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) that investigated the terror attacks, and the progress of the related investigations.

In response, he said that he was of the view that 99% of the related investigations carried out by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) were over. "The Catholic Church and certain other individuals keep holding media briefings and claiming that investigations have not been conducted properly. They were lamenting that they had not been given the CoI's report, and then I took steps to hand it over to the Church on approval of President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Both before and after that, I urged the Church to grant us an opportunity to meet them to explain the current status of the investigations," Alles stated.

If such an opportunity were to be granted, the Minister said that someone from the Church, including its bishops, would have been able to point out if there had been any deficiency in the related investigations. "If they see any shortcoming in the investigations, I ask them to point these out to us. Then, they could have worked together with investigative agencies and rectified the shortcomings, if any. If they did so, we could have put an end to this matter. Unfortunately, we have not received that opportunity so far. Certain parties are, instead, dragging this matter based on various other agendas. What I always say is that the Catholic community - including the Church - should get together with the Police and have a look at the status of the investigations if they really need to know who carried out these attacks and how they happened, but I don’t know why they have not done so up to now."

Alles had handed over the complete report of the CoI to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Sri Lanka (CBCSL) in April this year. The report had been handed over in the form of six compact discs. Speaking to The Daily Morning, an official of the Public Security Ministry said that the report had been handed over to the CBCSL President and Kurunegala Bishop Harold Anthony Perera with the approval of President and Minister of Defence Wickremesinghe.

The final report of the CoI was tabled in Parliament on 8 April 2021, but the witness records were not released, reportedly due to legal reasons. In February 2022, all the volumes of the report, including related witness records, were handed over to the Speaker of Parliament Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana. However, several parties including the Church had been accusing the Government of not releasing certain sections of the report, in an alleged attempt to cover up the truth behind the terror attacks.

Alles, addressing a press conference yesterday (28), added that the Ministry has taken steps to register non-Governmental organisations (NGOs) with the National Secretariat for NGOs and that therefore, measures will be taken to prohibit any NGOs that are not registered.