Former President Maithripala Sirisena was named a suspect by a Sri Lankan court on Friday in a case pertaining to the 2019 Easter bombings. He was also directed to appear in court this October.
The Magistrate Court in Colombo’s Fort area gave the orders in response to a private plaint filed by Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando, a member of the National Catholic Committee for Justice to Easter Sunday Attack Victims.
The complainant alleged that Sirisena is responsible for causing the death of a number of persons by doing a negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide since he functioned as the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Law and Order at the time of the Easter Sunday attacks took place, local media reported.
This comes six months after Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith told the UN Human Rights Council that the bombing incident was a “grand political plot.”
The Cardinal has been saying that the attacks had a political or electoral motive.
For more than three years now, families of the victims of the serial blasts -that killed about 280 people and left hundreds injured- and Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church have been demanding justice.
In May 2019, a parliamentary select committee accused President Sirisena of “actively undermining” government and security systems, leading to “serious lapses” ahead of the attacks that shook Sri Lanka.
