• Says Police and intel services had more responsibility than CID in thwarting bombings  

The Catholic Church of Sri Lanka stated that it had no objection to the appointment of Senior Superintendent of Police Shani Abeysekara to the committee tasked with reviewing the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI) which investigated the terror attacks on the Easter Sunday of 21 April 2019.

The committee, which was initially made up of four members, has now been expanded to five with the inclusion of Abeysekara.  However, there are allegations that his appointment amounts to a conflict of interest as he had been serving as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Director at the time of the bombings.

In light of the allegations, The Daily Morning contacted the Spokesperson for the Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando in this regard, and he said: "This committee is only here to study the CoI report. It’s a detailed and heavy document. Sub-committees will also be formed to support the process. Once the study is complete, we’ll be able to see what comes out of it.”

He also said that they had no issue with Abeysekara being appointed as a member of the committee. "The allegation is that the CID had received prior information that there would be a terrorist attack, but so did many others including the intelligence agencies. The Police, rather than the CID, and the intelligence services could have acted in time and arrested the suspects before the attacks happened. As far as we know, he (Abeysekara) is an efficient officer, and we have no objection regarding his appointment."

Acting Inspector General of Police, Priyantha Weerasooriya appointed the said committee chaired by Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police Asanga Karawita to study and analyse the report of the Presidential CoI appointed to the Easter Sunday terror attack.